Legends Of Grame Manifesto
by Ravenwood240
Summary: After thiry years of playing D&D, and teaching others to play, We have an AU world, drawn from every version of D&D, and this is its history.
1. Prologue

_A/N: This is my NaNoWriMo offering for 2006, ad it was finished on time, a feat that many of the people reading Prophecy will be amazed at, considering the amount of time it sometimes takes me to get a new chapter of just ten or twenty thousand words out. I have already started on new chapters of SOG and Prophecy, and I have this demonic little plot bunnie rampaging around in the back of my head, trying to escape. I think she will be out of my head by christmas, but not to y'all until next year._

_Anyway, here is 50,000+ words of people I know well, unlike Harry and crew. Alexander has played D&D for thirty years, he taught me to play, and along the way, the world changed, becoming an AU, where we could keep the things we liked and drop the junk._

_Welcome to Grame Manifesto._

_**Preface**_

Many of you will recognize some of the names used in this book. It is loosely based on Wizards of the Coast's _Dungeon and Dragons_ RPG. My older brother Alexander and his twin sister have been playing the game since it started, and they taught me to play.

We have been playing ever since and in the decades we've been playing, we have created our own version of the game. It is called Grame Manifesto and it is a conglomeration of things from all of D&D's history.

Along the way, we created a few player races and the Kal'Droth are one of them. We have used them for years and this is their history, painstakingly created over years of play.

_**Legends of Grame Manifesto; Book One**_

_**Prelude**_

_The bard looked around the tavern, using a honed eye to estimate what the crowd wanted tonight. Too many men and not enough women for the love songs, and they didn't have the feel of a crowd wanting funny songs "Tonight," she said, falling back on an old trick, "I am at your disposal. What would you have me play?" She pulled her gittern out and strummed a few sombre notes. "Tales of heroes?"She flashed through a series of faster notes that stirred the blood. "Songs of adventurers, of derring-do?"_

_Before she could continue, one of the men asked, "What are ye, girl? Only the Drow have skin of midnight, and yet they do not have wings, as you do."_

_The woman sighed. She'd answered this question more times than she could remember, and yet, comparably few knew of her race, a fact they were trying to change and she launched into what would be an all night tale. "Since you ask, good sir, I shall tell you the story of deception, anger and a curse still in power today, though it was cast before Men learned to harness magic and came to Grame Manifesto." She began strumming the gittern and smiled at the thought of the first of her race she would tell this people about._

_She took a second to collect her thoughts and started strumming a low background song, designed to accent her words. "Listen then to actions so old that none today can say what truly happened then." Without teasing any further, she plunged in the familiar tale._

_**In the Beginning**_

Long ago, before Men wandered the world or the Dwarves learned to make steel, the Elves had three races. Araushnee, consort of Corellon Larethian, led the Ssri-tel-quessir but became discontented and rose up in rebellion against her Lord, Corellon Larethian, leader of the Gods of the Elven kind.

She led many of her people and the lesser Gods and Goddesses of her people in the war, and for the first time, there was hatred between the various races of Elves. The rebellion failed and in his wrath, the God of the Elves decreed that all of those who followed the Lady would be exiled from the surface of the world, never again to walk under the sun. They became known as the Dhaeraow. Araushnee became known as Lloth.

One of the Goddesses of this people had not joined in the rebellion, nor allowed her followers to do so. Eilistraee came to Corellon Larethian and begged mercy for her people. The God relented, in that he allowed them to stay on the surface, but he banished them to a far away land. In their sorrow over what their race had done, they changed their name, to Kal'Ranious, or the People of Grieving.

Their new land was beautiful, rich in minerals and game, but bounded on every side by high cliffs. Travel anywhere outside of their land was impossible without wings and great daring, for swirling winds spun around their cliffs, making even flight nearly impossible. Magical travel to or from the valley was impossible, by Corellon Larethian's magic, unless you had his permission.

There, those few soon passed out of history, remembered only by a few Gods and very well learned sages.

So matters stood for more than twenty thousand years, as Dwarves and Men came to cover the world, and the Elves stayed the same. Elves you see, are immortal, unless slain or brought low by sickness, and while this allows them to study something for centuries, delving deep into mysteries, it also means that they tend to be highly resistant to change, until it is proven to be better than what is in place.

The Elves in the hidden valley changed, becoming different from their kin. Without access to the peoples that traditionally worked metal under the skin of the world, they learned to mine, and many of them spent their lives underground. Wood, or the lack of it, shaped the people, to the point that even today they are far more likely to have wooden furniture as a mark of high status. It meant that in the early years, they could only use a few trees, until they could grow tree farms to cultivate the wood they need.

Things like harps and lutes, and other items of luxury had to wait, and that included the easels and frames for painting. This left the dark skinned elves with a single mode of entertainment that didn't require wood or metal to use. As a result, the people have some of the finest voices of any race.

At some point, the valley was found by a group of Avariel, the winged elves of the world. They were fleeing a catastrophe they would not speak of, and after some initial problems, the two groups settled down in harmony.

About fifty years after the Avariel settled into the valley, Marrin Songbird, a bard from the people gave birth to the first cross-breed of the two people, with the black skin of her mother and the wings of her father. Named Wingsong, this child was soon joined by more of the Kal'Droth, as the cross-breeds were called.

As the years passed, more of the Kal'Droth were born, and in due time, it was found that the traits would breed true. Two thousand years later, there was only one group of elves in the valley, the Kal'Droth, or People of the Wing.

They changed the face of the valley, being less willing to work in metal, as few of the People of the Wing were willing to spend very long under the ground. They farmed less as well, and allowed most of the valley to become forest.

It was as the valley started to become too small to hold all the Kal'Droth that the legendary Moonshadow was born. From her birth it was evident that she was different. Faster, smarter and stronger than any other, she was restless in the valley, spending days exploring the outer limits of the valley and the surrounding areas, and few were surprised when she disappeared in her one hundred and fifth year.

She returned a decade later with news of the outside world. What she had to say was so shocking that a general meeting was called so that all could hear her words.

In the outside world, the black skinned elves had come to be called Drow, and their Goddess was now known as Lloth. They were considered to be inherently evil, with no redeeming qualities. They came to the surface of the world, raiding and carrying treasure and slaves back underground, delighting in cruel and pointless slaughter.

Moonshadow had been thought of as one of them, despite her wings and had nearly died many times as men, dwarves and even other elves attacked her on sight, because of her black skin. She had finally made a few friends, and discovered that Corellon Larethian still refused to relent from the curse he'd laid so many centuries ago.

The Kal'Droth had been considering expanding outside of the valley, but these reports gave them pause. There were not enough of the Kal'Droth to deal with hostility from any large group of people, nor did they have the skills of war, due to the centuries of isolation. They debated the words of Moonshadow and the needs of the community for nearly six months, and finally they made a decision.

They would choose some people to go out among the other races and live, trying to bring honour to the name of the Kal'Droth. These would be the very best of the young people, the restless ones that were looking beyond the borders anyway. They were sent out into the world to learn, and to show the world that the Kal'Droth are not like their Underdark cousins.

For five thousand years that is how matters have stood. The Kal'Droth that have come out into the outer world have done many things, making names for themselves. Of the more than seven hundred Kal'Droth that have walked the world, five have become household names.

Nightshade, possibly the greatest name ever, living proof that you can rob dragons for a living.

Shadowstalker, Rogue, Assassin, Cleric. The insane avenger, forged in blood and pain, sworn to fight evil in all its forms, wherever it raises its head, by any means it takes to destroy it.

Nightsong, Cleric of Good, sworn to serve and follow only the Gods that do good in the world.

Shadowwalker and Nightwalker, the Bardic twins, possibly the finest singers ever to come from the Kal'Droth, although few know it, since they are fond of looking on the other side of any hill they see.

This book of legends will tell many of the stories of the Kal'Droth and their friends.

_The bard finished the first part of her tale and looked at the people in the tavern. They looked interested still, and she started the tale of the best known Kal'Droth ever, the one that made a career out of Dancing with the Lightning._


	2. Nightshade

_**Chapter One**_

_**Nightshade; The Early Years.**_

"Nightshade, bring yourself down from there now." The voice of the fledgling flight instructor sounded clearly in the thin mountain air as he glared at the young Kal'Droth in the air. The other fledglings watched avidly, envying Nightshade's daring, but not willing to follow her.

The flier in question looped over, changing direction in less than two wingspans and dropping like a stone until she was barely thirty feet from the ground, where she flared her wings open and touched down as lightly as a flier of twice her sixty five years.

"Did you not hear me say that you were all to stay on the ground during the storm?" asked the instructor in a mild tone. He looked at Nightshade, examining what should have been his best student.

Nightshade was a sturdily built girl, with the midnight black skin and white hair of the Ssri-tel-quessir and the black feathered wings of the Avariel. She had long white hair that was normally in a braid, so that it didn't interfere with her flying, and the silver eyes that marked her as being one of the Astarri clan. There was nothing about her to make her stand out among the Kal'Droth, until you knew her. Nightshade had to go higher, fly faster and push just that bit harder. She was, in plain talk, a thrill seeker.

This bit of foolishness was a case in point. All fliers know that when lightning flashes in the sky, it's time to land and sit it out. Nightshade was the only person foolish enough to dance with the winds during a storm, and the instructor was very eager to hear what her excuse was.

Nightshade looked back at the stormy sky. "Look at the wind patterns. Dancing the winds right now is, is, " Words failed the young woman as she stared at the wind and thermal patterns all Kal'Droth could sense.

The instructor sighed. He could sense the patterns as well as she could, but he'd never wanted to pit himself against the fury of a mountain storm. Nightshade was possibly the best flier he'd ever trained, but this reckless streak in her was going to get her killed.

Nightshade was no stranger to pain or injury. Her need to dance the lightning had landed her in the Healer's hands more than once. He smiled briefly. Actually, Nightshade was on a Name basis with almost every Healer in the valley.

"Since our time is up for the day," the instructor said, addressing the entire crowd, "You may leave and I will see you all tomorrow." The twenty-six fledglings that made up this years class started toward the town and he held Nightshade back. "I know you want to be one of the Travellers, who go out into the world. I also know that unless you learn to control yourself, you will not be chosen. We don't send people out that cannot control themselves. We want the world to know that we are a good people, not like our cousins."

Nightshade stared at him out of eyes gone still and then smiled faintly. "I hear your words, Instructor," she said as her lips lifted in a true smile, "but I am not worried about it." Nightshade walked away as he frowned. What did that girl have up her sleeve?

The next twenty years saw Nightshade becoming one of the best known youngsters in the valley. She seemed to be everywhere, doing something or just trying to learn something new. She made casual friends easily, but she had no close friends, and even the bonds of family were less important to her than to most Kal'Droth.

She was one of the three that went into the old mines and captured an Annihilator, one of the giant vermin that could disintegrate a person with a touch and not two weeks later, she climbed the Needle, a four hundred foot rock tower in the valley without using magic or her wings. When somebody asked her why she did it, she shrugged before flashing a bright smile. "Just to see if I could," she said.

Only one thing stayed constant in those years, and that was her quiet devotion to Eilistraee. The clerics reported that she only missed a service when she was in the Healer's hands. Given that over that same time period Nightshade studied with practically everyone in the valley, from the bards to the wizards, that seemed like an odd focal point. She was asked if she was going to be a priestess and she denied it. "I am a worshipper, nothing more."

Nightshade was ninety-seven the year the new Travellers were chosen, and the debate among the people who chose the Travellers was intense. She was close to perfect for the job. Her only problem was that streak of recklessness and a tendency to do things her own way.

The Travellers who went out had special lessons, in languages and the customs of other races, as well as memory tricks and observation, so that they would remember everything they saw and be able to bring it back. They were all given certain things to learn about and sent out under a cover that would allow them to learn about that topic without seeming to.

Nightshade could have been sent out to learn about almost anything, but with her lack of focus, no one was certain that she would study it long enough to learn anything. In the end, she was not chosen for the Travellers. Those that knew her were surprised about her lack of reaction, but as the years went by, most people forgot about it since she seemed to.

Seemed to.

In her one hundred and tenth year, Nightshade went into the forest to practice the things she'd learned from the druids and disappeared. No one knew how she got out of the valley without tripping any of the wards, but she was gone.

It would be fifty years before she was heard of again in the valley where she was raised.

Nightshade smiled as she flew steadily north, hidden from casual sight by a charm of invisibility. While she had no intentions of returning to the valley any time soon, she was not willing to point a finger at the hidden valley either.

She flew steadily and when she tired she landed in a forested area, staying high in the trees to sleep and eat. She set the alarm spell to wake her if anything came close that night and closed her eyes. She entered a state of auto hypnosis, erasing her memories from her concious mind and planting the prepared memories that she had been planning for more than fifteen years.

The trance lasted for more than two hours and when it was over, it would take even the best Psion hours to find her true memories, if they didn't fall afoul of the protections in her mind first. This new being went to sleep, never knowing she'd been born in the last two hours.

The next morning, Liana, half breed daughter of a Drow noble and an Avariel slave woke up and started planning the rest of her life. She didn't know what she wanted to do, but she knew that she would never go back to being a slave.

She looked around at the woods surrounding her and flew above it. Looking around, she could just see something to the north and she flew in that direction. What she'd seen was a medium sized city of humans. She landed in the trees at the edge of the wood line and took stock of the things she had, the things she'd taken when she escaped the Drow.

One set of clothing, custom made for a winged creature, and leather armour to match it. A very nice bastard sword and a whip along with a Drow made hand crossbow rounded out her obvious weapons, but she also had two throwing daggers and two more daggers tucked into the knee high boots she wore. She also had a haversack with a lot of things in it, most of which were for selling, as she had no use for them.

A lute was strung over one shoulder and bracers with some type of magic on them encircled her forearms. Now that she looked at herself, she was wearing a bit of magic in several places. She would have to find out what the different things meant or did quickly.

She took a deep breath, preparing herself to meet surface people for the first time. She dropped out of the tree and flew toward the city. It was a walled city and her sharp eyes saw the guards posted on the walls before they saw her. She dropped to the road leading into the city as soon as they saw her and walked the rest of the way to the gate.

Armsman First Danlo Tharn had seen the speck in the sky, but hadn't said anything until it was close enough to make out what it was. He grinned as it came closer. Until it came closer still and he realized that it was not the Kal'Droth called Songlight.

He called the other two guards out of the shack and they watched as the girl walked up and stopped about fifteen feet away. "Greetings," she called in a lilting soprano, watching them carefully.

Tharn stepped forward and she focused on him, while watching his companions. "Greetings Milady, may I ask what brings you to King's Crossing?"

"Pure chance, and the need to speak to a mage." Liana was watching the men carefully, aware that surface people didn't think much of her male parent's race and she was confused. These people were watching her, but not because they were suspicious. They were calm and relaxed, as if they had dealt with people like her before.

"Will you be staying with Songlight while you're here, Milady?" Tharn asked.

Liana stared at him for a minute. "I had planned on staying in an inn, sir. I do not know anyone here, that I know of."

"The Kal'Droth called Songlight makes his home here," the man informed her, adding to her confusion. What was a Kal'Droth?

Armsman Tharn was beginning to wonder about this girl. He knew Songlight as well as any human, and he knew that there were few Kal'Droth in the world. For one of them not to know another seemed strange and he turned to one of the other guards. "Run and get the Sergeant, then go find Songlight." The other guard saluted and left, watched by the girl. Armsman Tharn turned back to the visitor. "I'm going to have to ask you to wait while my superior is summoned, Milady"

Liana nodded slowly, watching the men. She was wary, but none of them had any sense of malice to them, so she waited, prepared to fly away as soon as somebody made a wrong move towards her.

The guard the Armsman First Tharn had sent after the Sergeant and Songlight knocked on a door, waiting for the occupant to answer. When the door opened, he burst out, "Sir, there's another Kal'Droth at the north gate, but she claims not to know you, or that you live here."

Songlight frowned as he thought about what he'd just been told. He knew every Kal'Droth outside the valley, and any new Travellers should have been told who and where the ones already out of the valley were. This was strange. He closed his door. "I will go and look into this. Thank you for informing me." He stepped away and flexed his wings, springing into the air.

Liana was watching everything, and her sharp eyes spotted the flier before the guards, who were watching her. She stared at something she'd never thought to see, another of her kind. He had the midnight black skin of a Drow and wings. Her surprise was plain, in those seconds before she controlled her expression and the guards looked at each other as Songlight landed.

He ignored the guards and looked at the girl before him, because whatever else this person was, she was still a girl, not yet into adulthood for their kind. "Fair winds, my friend. May I ask your name?"

Liana was still shocked by finding another of her kind and she hesitated. Why did he want her name? Was he a Drow spy? Bred like her, but working for the ones she'd escaped from? She examined him. He didn't seem to be hostile, merely curious about her and she took a small chance. "I am called Liana."

Songlight frowned as he watched the girl closely. She didn't have a use name, as all Kal'Droth did, nor did she seem like any of his people. She was wary and cautious to the point of paranoia, two things he'd never seen in any Kal'Droth meeting another.

"Liana, may I ask where you hail from? I had thought I knew all of our kind, or at least knew of them."

Liana bristled. "I am not of your kind, nor am I anyone that you would know. Nor is my history any of your business. I wish to consult with a mage and do some business in the city, no more. If that is a problem, say so and I will leave."

Songlight stared at the girl in front of him, noting the Drow made equipment and her stance, ready to fly or fight, whatever the need was. She was a puzzle, and Songlight hated unsolved puzzles. "If you wish to consult a mage, you are looking at the only mage in the city. Come, we shall go to my house and talk."

She shook her head. "We shall go to your place of business. I want no part of another's home."

The male Kal'Droth frowned. He didn't know why this child was so paranoid, but he was beginning to be more than curious about her. He smiled slightly at her, frowning inside as she stiffened. "My lady, I know not what lies behind you, but you will be safe in my house. No one would hurt one of my guests, nor are you in any danger from me."

Liana raised an eyebrow and stared at him as if he'd grown another head. "I should just take your word for that?" she asked incredulously, shaking her head. "Am I a fool, or so gullible to believe everything I hear?"

The guards looked at each other and then at Songlight, even as they backed away. Songlight was still looking at the girl, but now his wings were mantling and he was not smiling. "I am a Mage of the Winged Flame, and a Kal'Droth. We do not lie, and to imply that we do is an insult."

Barely had the words escaped his mouth when the girl was in the air, headed for the forest. Songlight blinked in surprise and took off. This child was quick and agile, one of the best fliers he'd seen in many a year.

In the straight run to the forest, Songlight's greater wingspan and larger muscles allowed him to almost catch up, but as soon as they hit the edge of the forest, Liana was pulling away, using her smaller frame and agility to duck around trees and cut corners that Songlight could not.

He sighed as he flew. She was going to kill him for this, but she was getting away, and he was not going to allow that. He waited until they hit a clearing and cast a spell on the girl.

Her wings snapped tight to her body, and she drifted to the ground as Songlight landed next to her. "My lady, I would ask you again, to come and talk to me. I offered you the hospitality of my home because my workplace is there, and we would be going there in any case."

He looked at the girl and froze. He'd never seen such fury in another person's face and he watched as she squirmed and fought his spell. She strained and struggled silently, fighting to move her hands and throw off the spell he had her under.

Songlight sighed. He released the spell and jumped back as she came off the ground, attempting to knife him with a dagger that came out of nowhere. "Easy, I didn't mean to hurt you."

The girl, no, woman was crouched and ready to fight. "Don't ever take my wings again or I will kill you," she snarled, and snarl it was, putting him in mind of a tiger he'd seen once.

"I am sorry, but I want to know about you, and you were going to get away before we could talk. I'll make you a deal. I'll be your mage, that you said you needed, and I will not charge you for my services, if you will forgive me for starting off on the wrong wing."

Liana stared at him, not trusting him a bit. She knew that people on the surface were different, but she'd never met anyone that could be trusted on their word alone, without some sort of threat to keep them honest. Somewhere in the back of her head a small voice spoke to her. _"Perhaps that is why they are different. They could be honest."_ Liana frowned as she folded her wings around her and thought.

Songlight waited, watching this curious young lady closely. She was thinking hard, and stroking a primary feather, in what appeared to be a habit, but even now she was watching everything around her. Songlight had never met anyone with the levels of paranoia this girl had, and it made him wonder just where she'd grown up. Songlight froze as he finally had a thought that should have come to him when he saw her, and she wasn't a Kal'Droth. What if she was exactly what she appeared to be, a half breed Drow? He thought about the possibility, and found himself beginning to feel a little paranoid. He shook his head and decided that he would simply wait and see. She was far too young to be much of a threat, so waiting to see just what she was like couldn't hurt.

Liana finally looked at him. "I will go with you for now, but I want to be able to leave whenever I want, and I will not spend the night in your house."

"I will agree to that," Songlight said calmly, certain that he could change her mind later, if he needed to. The two of them took wing and landed before the northern gate, where Songlight soon had the guards calmed down, and he escorted Liana to his shop, making sure to enter by the public entrance with her. "Now," he said, "let us conclude our business, so that I may ask you some questions before you leave for the night."

Liana nodded and took the haversack off, spilling the contents out on the table as she looked around the shop. The back half of the shop was a wizard's working area, with strange arcane designs on the floor and a table with tubes and other glass things Liana couldn't identify on it. Some of them had various coloured fluids running through them and one was glowing slightly. There was a bookshelf on one wall, filled with dozens of books, more than Liana had ever seen at once and she had to fight the urge to go over and start reading them all.

A desk was near the shelf and a cabinet was against one wall. The rest of the shop was filled with display cases of things that appeared to be magical, to Liana's untrained eye. Rings and other small items were displayed under glass, near a counter that disappeared into another part of the building, which she assumed was his living quarters.

While Liana looked at his shop, Songlight was examining her goods. He was frowning by the time he was done. Some of these things, like the dagger that would fight without a hand on it, was worth something, and almost all of it was very dark in nature. Even the dagger was poisoned. Songlight was growing more and more certain that Liana had been raised by Drow. His eyes returned to a thing that had eluded identification without magic. He told her that he would be meditating for awhile and took up the item as she headed for his bookcase.

An hour later, Songlight had finished with the unknown item and he stared at it. It was interesting to say the least. Powerful beyond belief, it was also cursed. Songlight looked up to see his guest lying on the floor with one of his books, and for the first time, she was oblivious to her surroundings. He shrugged and left her there while he went on about his daily business, attending to his shop and clients.

Songlight was a creator mage, specializing in creating magical items and he did a brisk business with many people who wanted things and had the money to pay for them. In between commissions, he created standard items that adventurers wanted as well as other knick-knacks for the townsfolk.

At lunch he asked his guest if she would join him and was amused to barely get a grunt out of her. That night, as he prepared to close his shop for the day, he watched her with interest. She was reading a third book, and making notes on it. He recognized the book as a geography book, detailing the lands on this continent, and mentioning the other continents. "Liana," he said, and she hmmed at him, never taking her eyes from the book she was studying. "Liana, I am closing the shop. You'll have to put the book down."

She did look up at that, frowning as she looked from the book to him. "Of course, if you were to accept my hospitality, you could take the book to the guest quarters and continue reading."

Liana frowned again, looking at the book. She finally sighed and put the book away. "If you do not mind, I shall return tomorrow, at first light, to finish it."

Songlight nodded and smiled at her. "When you have read all of these, I have more in the house." He turned to her belongings, handing her everything except the cursed item. "I have written the magics down for each of these items, as well as the price you should be able to get from it. I regret that I cannot afford to buy it all from you, but if you're willing to sell it, I can get a good price for that pair of gauntlets you have."

Liana looked at the slip of paper with the gauntlets in question and shrugged. "I have no use for them. Sell them and keep ten percent for yourself." Songlight nodded and put the gauntlets in the magic space that served as his safe, since no one else could reach into it. Liana looked at the last item he had. "Why do you keep that one separate?"

Songlight picked up the wand. Made of some strange metal that was black with small lights in it,as if it was the night sky, it radiated magic. The wand was about eighteen inches long with a slightly thicker end wrapped in some thick leather. Starting at the handle it had runes in an alphabet Songlight didn't recognize running up the shaft in a counter clockwise spiral.

"This is the most powerful thing you have, Liana, but it comes with a curse. You can clear a spell from it and cast a new spell into it once per day. Once you've done so, you may cast that spell up to three times that day and every day until you change the spell out again. What makes this wand different from most wands, is that you can use any spell you want from this wand." He smiled at her blank look. "With most wands, in fact every wand I've ever heard of, there is a limit to the power of a spell that you can cast from it. Attempting to place a spell too strong into a wand destroys it." He hefted the strange black wand. "This wand, though, can accept any spell I could cast, even the most powerful."

Liana looked intrigued. "That sounds like a useful item, and yet you are worried about the wand. What is wrong with it?"

Songlight placed the wand on the table and looked at Liana. "Every time you use the wand, there is a small but growing chance that you will disintegrate on the spot."

Liana blinked. "I'm not particularly enthused about playing dice with my life. Do you know anyone who can remove the curse, or who might want to buy it?"

Songlight thought about it for a few minutes. "Removing the curse ruins the wand as far as I can tell. I might be able to find someone to buy it though."

Liana nodded as she put the other items back in her haversack. "Keep it then, and I'll give you the same deal as with the other things. For now, I must be going. I'll be back tomorrow."

Liana went out the door and Songlight watched her fly away with a frown. Liana was at once the most confusing woman he'd ever met, and the simplest, if you assumed that she believed everyone was out to get whatever they could from her.

And yet, she could forget everything in search of knowledge. That did not add up. He went into his living area still pondering this mystery. He sat down and thought about it, but he was not any closer to an answer when the front door glowed, telling him that someone had entered his property and was about to knock on the door.

He heard the knock and waited. Armsman First Tharn was escorted in a minute later by the house servant he employed. "Begging your pardon, my lord, but Armsman Tharn is here to speak to you."

Songlight greeted his friend warmly and they talked of minor things over dinner. It was not until they were in the study with glasses of wine that Danlo mentioned Liana. "What do you think of her?" The two men discussed the young girl for nearly an hour, and Songlight offered his theory that she was a Drow half-breed.

Danlo looked at him. "If she is, I would expect her to have darkvision like a Drow. I knew a couple of them in Waterdeep, and they all had it."

Songlight thought about that. "I may ask her, but if she doesn't, that would make her one of my people, and that is impossible. She is not like any of us."

Danlo Tharn frowned as he considered all the possibilities. "What if she's a shapeshifter, merely using the form of a Kal'Droth she's seen?"

Songlight finished his wine and sighed. "I hope not. That would mean that a shapeshifter has been to the valley, and seen an immature Kal'Droth, which is worrying all in itself."

Danlo frowned. "What do you mean, immature?" Songlight explained that by the standards of the Kal'Droth, Liana was not yet an adult. "We reach adulthood at about one hundred and fifty years of age, and she is not there yet. She is maybe one hundred and twenty at most, and with one exception, no Kal'Droth that young has ever left the valley."

Songlight and Danlo parted late that night without coming to any solid conclusions about the young woman and Songlight went to bed still wondering about her.

He was woken early in the morning when someone knocked on the front door. His servant came in the room a minute later. "My lord, Liana is requesting the use of your books."

Songlight looked out the window, where the sun was barely cresting the horizon. He got up and stretched. "She was not kidding when she said that she would be back at first light."

Maron Serfild had been his servant for nearly ten years. "If I may, Sir, I don't believe she jokes much at all."

"Noticed that, did you?" Songlight asked wryly. "Let her in the shop, and ask her before she gets into a book if she wants breakfast."

Maron nodded and turned away. He paused and looked over his shoulder. "And if she says yes, will she be eating with you?"

"If she wants breakfast, we'll be eating in the shop, as she refuses to enter the house." That set the pattern for the next two weeks, with Liana showing up and reading everything he had in his library and disappearing at night.

Songlight was careful to give her the space she wanted, as if she was a skittish animal he was trying to tame. The first indication that he might be succeeding came the morning she knocked on the door to the house, and had breakfast with him, in his house. She went back to the shop directly after breakfast, but that set the pattern for another week, until the rainy season started. Liana looked out of the shop window, watching the storm pouring rain on King's Crossing.

She looked at Songlight and frowned, biting her lip. "I would ask if I could stay here tonight," she said softly, "but only as a paying guest, so that I have no obligations unpaid."

Songlight managed to control his smile and nod gravely. "I will accept that, although you know that you could stay for free."

"Possibly," she said, and saw his face darken. "OK, I could, but I am not ready to be that trusting." She smiled at him, an open smile completely unlike her normal guarded expression. "I am aware of your allowing me to come to you, and I thank you for it." She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek quickly, disappearing into the house before the surprised Kal'Droth could respond. He stood there for a minute, smiling at the touch of the young woman, and followed her into the house.

He was mildly surprised to wake up the next morning after the sun had rose, but he figured that Liana had spent most of the night with her head in a book and was sleeping in. He went out to breakfast and Maron handed him a folded note. "Liana left this for you, my lord. She went out just after the sun rose."

Songlight nodded and opened the letter.

_Songlight,_

_Forgive me my little deception, but I had to be sure that you did not return me to the valley or try to keep me from what I want to do. I will ask that you not mention me to our kin, as I am not sure what they think of me leaving the valley. I was not chosen as a Traveller for various reasons, which I completely agree with. I wanted to be free to do what I wanted to do, not bound by the restrictions of the Travellers._

_This may not make any sense to you right now, but I am certain that somebody will be along soon that will tell you about the child that ran away from the valley. I hope that you will not mention me, but if you do it will not matter, as you do not know where I am going from here._

_I am sorry that I had to use my created personality on you, as you are a very nice person, but I could not expect you not to notice that I am a bit too young to be out of the valley, and I could not know how you would react to one of us. I thought that you might be a bit more lenient to someone that might be a random cross-breed._

_I learned a great deal in your care, and I thank you for the use of your library. I will remember you fondly, and I hope that you remember me the same way. One day, mayhap we will meet again, and you can see the real me._

_Nightshade Astarri_

Songlight read the letter twice, and looked at the line below her use name. Nightshade had written her Name there and he memorized it and then burned the letter to ash, rubbing the ash away with his hand, insuring that no one else would learn her Name.

He smiled as he thought about the letter. Nightshade was a canny one. By giving him her Name, without giving him a chance to give her his Name, she created a situation where he owed her a debt. Somehow, he thought she'd done it on purpose, to insure that he didn't mention her to any of the other Kal'Droth that he would meet. He sighed.

Somehow, he thought he'd be hearing of Nightshade again someday.

_**Waterdeep, ten years later.**_

Nightshade sighed and dropped the glamour that had covered her for the last day and a half. She was about to make her first public appearance in a city, and it would not do to start off by being caught pretending to be something she was not.

She launched herself from the tree she perched in and started toward the gates of Waterdeep. The guards saw her quickly, and they retrieved crossbows and other ranged weapons, but didn't aim them at her yet.

She landed a good fifty metres from them and walked slowly towards them. "Good morning, traveller. Would you be kind enough to stop and talk a minute?" It was courteously phrased, but it was not a request, Nightshade knew.

She smiled, an instant away from saying no, but her common sense reined in her sense of humour. "Of course, good sir."

She stopped and looked at the one that had spoken. A human, like most of Waterdeep, he was tall and burly, with an innate grace that made her thing of the big hunting cats of the jungles of Chult. This man would not be an easy opponent.

He looked at her with a frown, searching his memory. "My lady, I believe you are of the race of Kal'Droth? Did I pronounce that right?"

"You did, and yes, I am. I am Nightshade."

He frowned. "Nightshade, in our language, is a very deadly poison. Are you named such, or does it have another meaning in your native tongue?"

Nightshade sighed, having heard that same comment time and time again over the last ten years. "I am named after the shadows of night, caused by the full moon and trees of the forest. In your language, it would be "night shadows of the full moon in the forest", and since that is much too long of a name, I am Nightshade."

The man smiled. "I see, the shade in your name is in the meaning of shade, as from the sun or another light source." He nodded and smiled at her. "Your language must be one of the older ones, as few languages today can pack so much meaning into a single word."

Nightshade looked at the man again, her interest stirred by his words. "Are you a scholar of languages?" she asked in Draconic.

"I have been known to study a word or two," he replied in Elven, smiling.

"More than a word or two, if you can converse in so many languages," she parried in Dwarven.

"Ah, but to claim great skill in anything and boast is unseemly," he said in Gnomish.

"Truly, but to hide your learning is but falsehood," she disagreed in Terran.

"You have me with that one," he said in Common with a frown, "what was it?"

"The language of Earth creatures," Nightshade said with a smile. "It is good to meet a fellow scholar. Maybe you could recommend a good inn in the city."

The guard made his recommendation and they chatted for a minute longer until more people approached the gate and he had to work.

Nightshade passed into the city with a sense of wonder. She barely refrained from gawking like a country peasant at the buildings and people. Hearing about buildings as tall as old forest trees is one thing; seeing them for the first time is another thing entirely.

And the people, teeming multitudes, as impossible to count as grains of sand on a beach. Humans, of every colour and size, dressed in hundreds of colours and speaking more languages than Nightshade had ever heard of. Elves, of every type, Dwarves from far away places and other races, all openly walking under the sun and talking to each other as equals. Even with this variety, Nightshade drew the eye. Few of the people she saw had wings, and fewer still had the black skin of a Drow, and none saving only her had both.

"Get ye back under the earth!" Nightshade turned, seeking the speaker, but saw only people walking by. She found the Inn of the Silent Lion, that the guard had recommended and went inside. As she entered the common room she stopped to let her vision adjust.

"Good day, my lady," came a voice from the left side of the room, and she turned in that direction. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw the speaker and raised an eyebrow. He was a half Drow, with an arm missing and terrible scars across the side of his face.

"Fair day, sir. I was told that I might find a room here."

"That you can, and will you be wanting a perch room, or a regular bed?" The innkeeper didn't even bat an eye at her and Nightshade got the impression that he had a good many winged customers if he had rooms set up for them.

"Give me a perch room, for at least a month," she said, "possibly longer if the learning here is to my liking." They dickered over the price for a few minutes, even though Nightshade had no need to worry about money. She had spent little enough over the last few years and made more than enough to cover her expenses.

The next four months flew by, as Nightshade plundered the knowledge of every library she could get access to, studying no particular subject, but broadening her base of knowledge. Nightshade had acquired a magic bag, that held far more than its size suggested and she came close to filling it with scrolls of notes on things she had studied and topics she wanted to follow up on when she had the chance. It was realizing that she had notes on more things than she could study in five times a Kal'Droth's lifespan than made her stop and consider her actions over the last decade.

She had learned at least a little bit about everything under the sun, delving into any knowledge that she could get someone to show her. She'd learned some interesting things that way, and a few things that were darker than a Drow's heart, not that she ever planned on anyone knowing that.

She had added more languages to the four she'd spoken when she left the valley and now she could find some language in common with almost any race or being that walked the surface of the planet, and most of the ones that lived under the surface.

For all of this, she had not done anything of note, nor made any sort of difference to the people around her. It was time to settle down and decide what she was going to do with the knowledge she had. She went to her haversack and pulled out a small box. Going downstairs she took a couple of sticks from the pile next to the fireplace and went outside. She launched herself into the air and landed on the special perch on the Inn's roof, where the fliers living in the Inn could relax under the open sky.

She set her box down and opened as she studied her first stick of wood. She chose a knife and began carving as she thought. She wanted to make a mark in the world, to leave behind a legacy that would only grow after her death. She wanted to be considered a serious student of something, and yet nothing had yet caught her attention as worthy of several hundred years of study.

As she thought her hands continued to carve, forming a shape under her sure carving. This one would be an ogre, she saw and smiled slightly. No one in the valley would even believe that the excitable and hasty Nightshade would find so much pleasure in carving puppets, of the kind found in hundreds of little stalls across the land. She finished the ogre without finding an answer to her thoughts and dropped off the roof to go inside as night fell.

She found the Innkeeper and told him that she would be leaving at first light. "It's sorry I am, to see you go," he said, smiling softly, "you've been good company these few months. You will come back some time, after you've gotten a bit older?"

Nightshade blinked, staring at the half Drow. She'd never been told quite so bluntly that someone wanted to know her a bit more intimately than they did. "I'll be back, someday," she said softly. "I will make no other promises at this time."

He smiled, touching her hand. "That's all I ask. I have hope at least."

_**Chapter Two**_ _**Roland of the Golden Hammer**_

Nightshade was winging her way south, heading for the Shaar when she saw a most unusual sight. She stayed high above the being walking west for almost twenty minutes as she considered the bizarre sight. She grinned and made a choice. She swooped down and landed in front of the Dwarf.

He stopped and the two of them considered each other for a minute. The dwarf saw a slim woman with tight muscles packed on her frame, black of skin and with sable feathered wings that would span twelve feet easily. She wore breeches and a shirt under a leather vest, all in a midnight blue that blended easily into her skin. Over her right shoulder was the hilt of a bastard sword that angled down her back between her wings and a whip was attached to the left side of her belt. There was a dagger and a lasso on the other side of her belt and two dagger hilts peeped out of her knee high boots.

Nightshade saw a dwarf, who was very tall for a dwarf, and broader than normal even for a dwarf, who was dressed in plate mail. It was the plate mail that had first attracted her attention, because it appeared to be made of gold. As she studied the dwarf, she saw that the armour had nicks and scratches from wear, and she realized that if it was gold, it was some type of gold she'd never heard of, because ordinary gold was far too soft to make armour of. She could not see much of the dwarf himself under all the armour, mostly the beard and his eyes. "Is that armour really gold?" she asked, curious about how you made golden armour that worked.

"It tis, and might I be askin why ye want to know?" the dwarf replied gruffly.

Nightshade's sense of humour got the better of her. "I want it, but I don't see any way of getting it right now."

The dwarf reached over his shoulder and grabbed the handle of the weapon that rode there. He pulled it from his back and Nightshade's eyebrow went up. It was a maul, of incredible size and apparently made of the same golden metal as his armour. The dwarf spun it twice and grounded it, staring at Nightshade. He didn't say anything, just stared at her and she smiled.

It was a blatant challenge and for an instant she thought about taking up the challenge. The thought passed quickly and she took wing, passing out of his sight behind some trees. She watched and he put the maul back and continued down the road.

Nightshade shadowed him for the rest of the day, until he stopped for the night. She dropped out of the sky as he set up his camp and started a fire. As she landed he looked at her and drew his weapon. "Finally plucked up ye nerve?"

"No, I've decided you will be more interesting to watch. After all, a dwarf wearing golden armour is bound to get in a fight with something too big for him to handle sooner or later, and then I can get the armour when you no longer need it." She held up a pair of quail she'd killed during the day. "I make good dinners, would you care to share your fire and my quail?"

The dwarf stared at her and suddenly laughed. "Iffen ye're going to be around long enough for me to find something I can't deal with, lass, then step up and show me ye cooking skill." He sat down near the fire. "Me name's Roland, lass. And what do they call ye?"

"Nightshade, unless they're feeling irritable for some reason, then I might be anything." She pulled her cooking gear from her haversack and started dinner. "So, did you make that armour, or is there a great story behind it?"

"Lass, the makin of anything is a story all its own, and makin armour of gold, but makin it strong enough to do battle in is a great story." The dwarf took off his helmet and smirked at the slight Kal'Droth. He took his maul and set it down. "Pick it up," he invited.

Nightshade reached for the maul and blinked. She knew it would be heavy, but this thing must weigh ninety pounds or more. She looked at the dwarf with respect. "You can wield this monster in battle? I am impressed." She looked at the armour he wore so casually. "Is the armour as heavy?"

"Aye, lass. It's a process called 'heavy metal', and the only people I've found that can truly use and appreciate it are other dwarves."

Nightshade listened to Roland talk about smithing as she cooked. She found herself growing envious of this dwarf, who wasn't much older than she was, in the ages of his race. He knew what he wanted to do, he'd found the one thing he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

She didn't understand half of what he said and she made a mental note to read some books on smithing soon. He rambled on all though dinner and late into the night, until she started setting her wards. Roland stopped talking about metal and the perfect anvil long enough to ask her what she was doing. "You may have Dwarven endurance, but I am an elf and a mage. I need some rest if I'm going to be effective in the morning, or able to ask you coherent questions."

"I will watch over ye, lass." Nightshade blinked, staring at Roland.

"You are trusting, to so readily accept a stranger into your camp."

Roland laughed. "Tis nae trust, but a firm belief in your practicality. Ye want me armour, but it's terrible heavy for you. Ye would let me get closer to some place where ye kin get help carrying it."

Nightshade stared at Roland for a minute and then laughed. "What a wonderful idea. Where were you headed, anyway?"

"I'm going to Silverymoon. There's a smith there that has some secrets I'd like to know."

Nightshade nodded. "I've never been there. I'll go along." A sly smile crossed her face. "At least until I figure out how to carry your armour."

_**Twenty five years later**_

Roland stood in the middle of the boat, staring distrustfully at the water surrounding him. "Why do I let ye talk me into this stuff?" he griped. "Every time ye have a new job, we end up in some place that I don't want to be. What am I supposed to do iffen I fall off this floating toothpick?"

Nightshade looked up from her book and examined the sweating dwarf she'd spent two and a half decades wandering the world with. "Trust me to bring your armour back up? I've been waiting twenty five years for you to die so I can claim it, and I am not going to let it rust at the bottom of the river."

Roland glared at her. "Me armour doesn't rust!" he shouted, before seeing the smile playing about Nightshade's lips. "Bah! Why in the name of Moradin do I put up with ye?" The irate Roland went back to staring at the river, deciding that it was more reasonable than that irritating flying elf. "Bad enough," he grumbled, just loud enough for Nightshade to hear him, "that the gods gave elves feet, but no, just to torment me, they have to create one with wings and an unholy attraction to me armour." He was about to continue when something landed on his shoulders.

He staggered, watching the railing. "Get off of me, ye durned fool!" Nightshade grabbed the bottom of his helmet, and bent over, looking at Roland upside down from her perch on his shoulders. "Roland, dear, would you like to dance the winds with me again?"

Roland stared at her, seeing the little crease she always got between her eyes when he'd pushed her a bit too far. "Sorry, lass," he said quietly, knowing her sharp ears would hear him. "I just don't like this boat. That river is just a bit deep for me to be happy with. I'd rather you didn't get me armour for a few more decades."

The weight left his shoulders and Nightshade appeared in front of him, her feet firmly planted on the deck. She smiled sympathetically at him. "I know, but think of all the things you can get for the Aerie with your share."

Roland frowned at Nightshade. "That's iffen I kin keep a certain black winged bookworm from spending all our money on new books again."

Nightshade darkened in the way that Roland had learned was a Kal'Droth blush. "I only spent it all once, and I was young."

She smiled fondly at the thought of her library in their home, a magically hollowed out mountain she'd named the Aerie, in honour of the home she'd left all those years ago. It was possibly the largest private library in the known world, second only to the legendary Tammar's, but that wasn't a fair comparison.

Tammar was immortal, and had been a sage for more than twenty five thousand years. Nightshade still blushed every time she remembered the one time she'd met the ancient elf, who remembered the breaking of the Elven races as personal history. She'd blushed and stammered, acting like a untutored peasant meeting an emperor. Not one of her finest days.

She looked up as Roland snickered and glared at him. The two of them had been through a lot together in the last twenty five years, and he could read her like a book. Given the way the conversation had been going, he'd easily surmised just why she was blushing now. "Lady Thunderaxe still accepting your letters?" she asked sweetly.

It was Roland's turn to flush. He was as avid about metal ores and sources as she was about learning and they'd gone to a Dwarven clan to make a deal for some of the fresh mithral ore from a new vein they'd found, and Roland had met the youngest daughter of the clan leader, Lady Thunderaxe. Barely an adult, she was just two years younger than Roland and Roland had fallen hard for her. She had been quite willing to accept the letters of a dashing (To Dwarves) adventurer, especially after he demonstrated his smith skills to her clan, and her father had praised him.

Roland's weapons were fast becoming famous among richer adventurers. Made with alchemically treated 'heavy metal' gold and platinum, even without magic they hit harder than most weapons and did more damage than other weapons the same size.

Of course the material they were made of and the sheer work that went into them meant they were high end weapons, but when a good weapon meant the difference between life and death for you and your friends, cost became less of an issue.

Nightshade and Roland of the Golden Hammer had done a few things that brought them to the attention of the powers that be, and now were beginning to get a reputation for getting things done, no matter how hard the task. Nightshade blushed again as she remembered why they'd taken those early impossible missions. Roland had refused to reveal his secrets for making his weapons and she'd started investigating the capabilities of his armour and weapons.

She'd gotten Roland to go along on a couple of the early missions be letting him get most of the money for the adventure, and then she'd found that accepting mission near smiths he wanted to meet meant that he'd pay less attention to the mission briefing and more to how much time they would have after the mission to talk to whatever smith was in that location.

Since Nightshade was new to the adventuring game, she'd accepted a couple of missions that older and wiser heads had backed away from and only two things had kept them from becoming a very short footnote in adventuring history.

The first, Nightshade admitted only to herself, was blind luck. She didn't know if her continued faith in Eilistraee or Roland's quiet devotion to Moradin was responsible, but they had gotten insanely lucky a few times. Not that Nightshade was complaining, and she regularly dropped a few coins in the temple of Tymora's coffers in their name.

The second thing that had saved them those first few missions was that they made a great team. Roland was blunt, as straight forward as an axe blow to the face. Nightshade herself thought more in circles and angles, and between the two of them, they survived a couple of missions that had caught the eye of certain people in power.

They spent one crazy week following Sir Torm around, cleaning up little messes after the end of the Planar War and did a free lance assignment for Danilo Thann, which meant they had been working for the Blackstaff. After that, there had been a couple of quiet offers to join this group or that, including an offer to become Harpers.

Nightshade checked with Roland and since he didn't care one way or another, the offers were declined. Nightshade was a great one for joining organizations, as long as they just collected their dues and left Nightshade and Roland alone. Those that didn't tended to find all sorts of little things going wrong for them until they got the message. Nightshade was perfectly willing to be part of a group, as long as she led.

Roland didn't really care what they did, as long as she gave him plenty of time to perfect his smithing, and they'd had a few others join them for short periods, but few people were willing to face the risks Roland and Nightshade did for money.

Roland had no real sense of personal danger, trusting in his weapons and armour to get him out of any problem, and Nightshade had always loved to dance the lightning, a common Kal'Droth saying for taking large risks.

Between them, they came up with impossible plans that somehow seemed to work, despite common sense or rational thought. Some critics, and there were many of those, said that their insane plans only worked because the pair were insane.

Nightshade just smiled and marked the loudest for revenge. It had taken nearly a decade for Nightshade to become known as a prank playing joker, since she never signed her work, or played the same joke twice. Roland had known it long before anyone else, but he'd never said anything preferring to watch the mayhem and snicker in his beard.

It wasn't until someone noted that the people who would suddenly feel an urge to profess undying love to a statue in the town square, or walk into the king's ball completely nude, while claiming to be wearing the latest fashion were people that had annoyed Nightshade, that the truth came out.

A few offended nobles tried to challenge Nightshade, only to find out that Nightshade was not a duellist, but an alley fighter. She was small, as most of the elven kind are, and she had light bones, because of her Avariel heritage, part of what made it possible for her to fly.

Since Nightshade had no intention of allowing large massively muscled beings to strike her, she used every trick in the book to avoid melee combat. She flew, used magic and had no problem using killing poisons.

After she used the Marcus spell on one challenger, the challenges stopped. Marcus the Destroyer, long considered the single most evil being to walk above or below the surface of any world had created a spell to distract men on the field of battle, be it magical or melee battle.

The spell was simple. It created a cube of rock salt in the pouch that holds a man's family jewels. Since salt in the blood is extremely painful and had been used as a torture for years, we need not say more.

There were no more male challengers.

One more female tried to challenge her, but Nightshade took her aside and whispered something in her ear and she changed her mind, selling her house and moving to Unther.

Some few tried to prank her back, and fewer succeeded, but those that did earned her admiration, even as she pranked them. The Nightshade/Silkhands war was finally brought to a halt by the city council of Longsaddle, where they were living at the time.

Tasha Silkhands was a human adventurer that had joined them for a short while when they were looking for the mythical City of Lost Souls and it was apparent from the beginning that Tasha and Nightshade were two of a kind.

Which of them played the first joke is not known to anyone but themselves, but the last joke resulted in every adult in Longsaddle being reduced to the mental age of a ten year old human child.

It also made them very hyperactive.

After the damage was repaired and a count made of all the missing animals from unwatched herds, the city council brought an accounting to the two women. They gave them a choice between paying for everything or signing a contract never to play another joke within fifty miles of Longsaddle.

The two women signed.

Nightshade was brought back from her musings as Roland tried to distract himself from all the water under his feet. "Tell me what we're doing going north with winter starting agin, Lass?"

"Nothing, really. It's a simple mission, completely straight forward. After Planar War and the recent Orc uprising, there are several thousand orcs in dozens of bands raiding the Ten Towns, and we're being paid to kill as many as we can."

Roland frowned. "Lass, ye got our money upfront, right? This can nae be as easy as it sounds."

_**Somewhere south of Icewind Dale, two weeks later.**_

Roland and Nightshade stood on the top of a hill looking into the valley. "I told ye this could nae be as easy as it sounded, lass." Nightshade looked at the orcs, trying to estimate how many there were.

"It's not that bad, there aren't more than three hundred of them." Roland turned to look at Nightshade.

"Well then, lass, since three hundred orcs is nae a problem, show me your plan." Roland's sarcasm was thick enough to use as a shield, but Nightshade just smiled.

Without a word she leaped into the air and was soon out of Roland's sight as she cast another invisibility spell, like the one that covered Roland on the hill.

Roland spent a few minutes wondering what she was doing until she returned, stepping into the range of his invisibility spell and dropping hers. "Now, we wait until after they eat." Nightshade's smile bordered on the sadistic and she turned to Roland. "I'm going to need some of your hair for part two. Shall I take them from your beard?"

Roland stepped back. "Leave me beard alone, durn ye hide. I'll give ye a few from me head." He undid his helm and pulled three hairs from his head. "Is that enough, lass, or would ye be wantin to make me bald?"

Nightshade grinned. "Lady Thunderaxe would never forgive me." She took the hair and added them to a few other things and then sat down, watching the orcs with a smile.

Roland sat down beside her. "So what are ye planning, lass?" Nightshade smiled and told him.

Roland blinked and started laughing, keeping it quiet. "Lass, this is a good un. We may have to try it agin someday."

Nightshade nodded, her attention back on the orcs, most of whom were eating now. "We will, especially if the rest of the 'bands' are the size of tribes."

Twenty minutes later, Nightshade was ready, and she cast the spell that was part two of her plan. Under cover of invisibility, she had laced the stew pots with a mildly suggestive drug, that would lower their resistance to believing what they were told or saw.

Now, she found the one that had been acting as the leader and dropped the second half of her plan on him. The programmed illusion covered the leader, making him appear to be Roland. "I'm going to kill all of you!" the illusion roared, and brandished a golden maul.

The orcs around the leader reacted just the way Nightshade was hoping, and drew weapons to kill the dwarf that had so suddenly appeared in their midst. Seeing his underlings attacking him, and unable to see the illusion he was under, the leader defended himself, and in seconds the fighting spread across the camp.

Nightshade and Roland sat on the hill in the deepening darkness and watched the show. The fights and dying continued late into the night, and when the leader finally went down under the onslaught of a dozen of his former followers, Nightshade created another illusion of Roland in another part of the camp.

By the time the sun rose and the orcs left, more than half of them lay in the camp, suitable now only as food for scavengers. They followed the orcs, playing tricks on them and waiting for nightfall. Under the cover of the dark, Nightshade snuck down and added a purgative to the food pots.

By noon, the orcs that had cooked were dead, and entire groups were breaking for the woods, which could be a bad thing, as Nightshade and Roland, with his armour disguised, were haunting the edge of the trail, slaying all the orcs they ran across. Since the orcs were distracted by their loosened bowels, it took them a very long time to figure out that someone was coming, and by then, Roland's maul or Nightshade's blades had ended their life.

Three days later the group they had been hunting was gone, broken into small groups of less than twenty, and having left more than two hundred and twenty dead behind. No orc had yet to see the pair that followed them and lived to say anything about it.

Nightshade was out scouting for more orcs when something moved on the cliff face just up the valley, and she landed, waiting to see what it was. She watched with interest as a young white dragon appeared out of the mountain and launched itself into the air. It circled twice and flew off to the north.

Nightshade waited a few minutes but the dragon didn't reappear and Nightshade went to where the dragon had appeared and cast a spell to allow her to see though illusions. A large hole was revealed in the face of the cliff and with one last look around, Nightshade entered the hole.

White dragons are not known for their intelligence and this one was no exception. The traps that should have protected the dragon's hoard were primitive and easily bypassed.

Nightshade reached the dragon's hoard in less than twenty minutes as the cave system was not all that big and smiled. She took out her bag of holding and started taking everything. The things went first, and then she started on the piles of coins, using a telekinesis spell to help fill her bag.

When she was done, she looked around, making sure she hadn't missed anything and cast a spell to detect magical energy. One side of the wall glowed to her eyes and she stood before it concentrating.

The wall wasn't an illusion, so she cast another spell, one that found secret doors. A knob of rock began glowing and she pushed and prodded it until a section of the wall simply vanished.

Nightshade stopped, biting her lip. She didn't know how much longer the dragon would be gone, and somehow she thought it might be a bad idea to be caught in the lair when it did return. She stepped into the tunnel that had been revealed and examined it quickly. She swore to herself when the section of wall that had disappeared simply reappeared, trapping her behind it.

She looked around, but without another spell to find hidden doors, she couldn't figure out how to open it from this side. Nightshade sighed and turned to look down the hall.

The hall ran further into the mountain, and looked as if dwarves had made it. She spent a futile minute wishing she had Roland with her and started down the hall, carefully checking for traps.

The Kal'Droth did not have the superior darkvision of their Drow cousins, but they could see for short distances in the dark, and Nightshade blessed that ability now.

Somehow, she didn't think anything down here needed light to see, and using a light would simply scream 'Intruder! Come eat me!'

The hallway ran straight back for nearly four hundred paces and ended in a circular room with four other doors, besides the one Nightshade had come out of. The only other thing in the room were four long dead bodies, still dressed in their armour and gear.

Nightshade examined one of the bodies, discovering it was a dwarf, with most of his or her gear rotted or rusted beyond use. She examined the others, finding a dagger that was untouched by the hand of time and a curious little book, which was not rotted away like the other perishable things here.

She picked up the book and froze, nearly dropping it as it seemed to glow for a second and then she could feel the magic in it. She looked at the cover, seeking anything that would tell her what she'd just picked up, and for just a minute, the cover had words in red ink on it, with words in an old Dwarven dialect that she had a hard time reading.

_"Righteous Fury, A Handbook for Vengeance."_

The words faded away as soon as Nightshade had read them and she considered the book cautiously. She knew, without knowing how, that once she started reading this book, she would not be able to stop until she had finished it, and she simply didn't have that sort of time right now.

She tucked the small book into her belt pouch and looked at the doors around her. The four doors that bisected the chamber seemed to go in the four cardinal directions and she considered where she'd come from.

She took the door that was closest to returning her to the direction she'd come from, but was forced to return when the hall ended in a cave in. She took the southern door and followed it. This hall ran straight for nearly eight hundred paces and then ended in a t intersection.

There was a faint brush of air on her feathers from the right side and she went that way, feeling the breeze grow as she went along the dark tunnel.

Nightshade was beginning to get uneasy. She was a creature of the open skies, and this closed in tunnel without even room to fly was not to her liking. She was getting careless as she sped up, feeling the breeze strengthen as she went. She was beginning to notice the slightest lightening of the gloom when the ground fell out from under her and only the speed at which she'd been moving allowed her to catch the far edge of the pit.

She pulled herself up and looked down. At the bottom of the pit were several bodies, mostly older. She was about to turn away when she saw the glow emanating from under one of the bodies. She squinted, trying to see what was causing the glow, but whatever it was, it was covered by the body above it.

Nightshade bit her lip and wedged a steel dagger in the pit lid, so that it couldn't close on her and start looking for something to tie her rope to. She couldn't find anything secure enough and sighed. She was going to have to use her glue. She reached into her haversack and pulled out the tiny vial. This was her last use of the glue, so she didn't bother with the salve that would allow her to close the vial and reopen it.

She fixed the end of her rope to the ground with the glue and lowered the rope over the edge, watching it as it went down, but nothing seemed to happen to it and she started down the rope. About halfway down the rope, she passed through a zone of silence and hoped nothing went wrong down here, because no one above that zone would be able to hear her now. She reached the bottom and took a minute to look around.

The pit was nearly thirty feet across and had been built with spears facing up, but they were broken off or covered by the bodies of people that had fallen down the hole and not been cleared away.

She looked at the glow again and could see from here that it was coming from a sword. She reached for the sword and as her hand touched the hilt, Nightshade cursed her curiosity, because the sword spoke in her mind.

"_I am Savignon, and we shall have many adventures, I think."_

Nightshade tried to pull her hand from the sword, but even as she thought about it, the sword was changing, until the hilt felt right in her hand. Nightshade pulled the sword from under the body, looking at it.

Savignon was a bastard sword, with a wide blade and two fullers running nearly the full length of the blade. The cross guard was made of gold and steel, forming two outstretched wings and the hilt was wrapped in gold and silver wire. The pommel stone was some sort of black coloured crystal with a reddish flare deep inside it.

Nightshade held the blade and went from low guard to a lunge and then back to high guard. This sword was as perfect for her as if it had been made just for her.

_"I am a mutable blade, becoming the weapon you most desire. You, as a cleric of Eilistraee, use her preferred weapon, and such is what I became for you."_

Nightshade sighed. "I have always been told that talking weapons are trouble. I don't suppose it would be nice of me to leave you here now."

Savignon seemed to pulse in her hand. _"I would really prefer that you not do that. I have been in this hole long enough, and I would see the light of day again."_

Nightshade was about to say something when Savignon spoke again. _"One of the bodies here was my previous wielder, a paladin of Tyr. Find his body, please, that it need not lie in this pit with the orcs and goblins."_

Nightshade sighed again and leaned the sword against the wall. She searched each body as she moved them, finding a few coins but not much else until she found a body in plate mail near the bottom of the hole. _"Bring him out so I can see him, and I will use a spell to take him to the top of this pit."_

Nightshade pulled the body out, looking at Savignon with growing interest. "You can teleport him, or is it levitation? How do you see, anyway? You don't really have eyes."

The body vanished, and Nightshade heard a noise from the top of the pit. _"It's teleport, and I have some abilities, like seeing and hearing."_

Nightshade heard the wry humour in the sword's tone and matched it. "Teleport being an ability like seeing? How do I learn to use it?"

The sword didn't reply for a second and then both of them were at the top of the pit. _"Like that,"_ the sword said smugly. Nightshade looked at the body. _"The scabbard over his back is mine, I'd appreciate it if you would bring it with us."_

Nightshade looked at the sword, lying on the ground near the edge of the pit. She got the scabbard off the body and slipped the sword into it. She put it on her back, riding opposite her own weapon. _"I hope you treat me better than you do this sword."_

Nightshade frowned at the sword's tone. "Excuse me, but I've been hunting orcs for three days straight, and I haven't had time to clean him properly. When Roland and I stop for the night, I'll clean him better." Nightshade was about to ask how she was supposed to move a body in full plate mail when the body lifted up and moved behind her. "So, do you know how to get out of here?"

"_We came straight down this way, and there is a shaft to the top of the mountain about a half mile up this way. It should be wide enough that you can fly out of here."_

Nightshade grinned. "Well then, we'd better get moving." She started down the hallway, asking Savignon how they had ended up in the pit.

"_We were searching for a killer, a Frost Giant that had despoiled a temple of Tyr. While we were looking for the monster, we ran across this cave, with tracks of orcs coming in and out. At the time there was a standing order to investigate any sightings of orcs south of Icewind Dale. We entered carefully, but somebody inside saw us and in trying to lose them we fell into the pit."_

Nightshade nodded. "What year was that?"

Savignon thought for a minute. _"It was thirty-one seventy-two."_

Nightshade stopped, thinking. "You've been in that hole for three hundred and fifteen years."

Savignon seemed to quiver. _"May I assume that things have happened in that time?"_

Nightshade waited a minute to answer the sword, as they had reached the shaft that Savignon had spoken of, and Nightshade was far too anxious to reach the open sky, flying quickly up the shaft and out, glorying in the freedom of the wind on her face and room to fly.

Nightshade laughed at Savignon's reminder of her question and started back toward the camp and Roland. "Many things."

Nightshade began giving Savignon a brief history lesson. The Time of Troubles, with Gods walking the world and dying. The rise of Marcus the Destroyer, and his downfall. The Planar War, ending with three billion dead, and the destruction of several planes. The rise of the orc nation and King Obould, and his death at the hands of a Drow ranger. Lloth's death and rebirth, and the myriad other things that had happened in those three hundred years that the sword had been lost in a pit.

Savignon sighed heavily. _"I have missed a great deal, down in that hole, and I thank you for bringing me out of there." _The sword's mental tone changed, becoming hesitant. _"I will understand, given your thinking about intelligent weapons, if you choose to give me to someone else."_

Nightshade thought about it for a few minutes. "I was going by what someone else told me, as I have never met one of you before, and I cannot justify just dropping you like that. I am sometimes judged by the colour of my skin, and I hate that. I cannot judge you for having metal skin without being a hypocrite. Let's finish this mission first, and we will see where we go from there, agreed?"

The two of them chatted as Nightshade approached the camp where Roland waited. She landed and grinned at her friend. "Did ye find any orcs?" was Roland's opening comment.

"No, but I did rob a dragon, rescue a talking sword and find an old Dwarven tunnel system that's been abandoned for three hundred years. I can find orcs tomorrow."

"Lass, would ye mind giving me a few details?"

_**The Aerie, five years later.**_

"Ye want to what!?! Roland stared at Nightshade with his mouth open. Nightshade just continued to lay out some maps and sheets of parchment with a great many things written on them.

"I said, I need some help robbing a dragon." Before Roland could say anything else, Nightshade directed his attention to the first map. "The lair is located in the Crystal Mountain range, just north of King's Crossing." Nightshade grinned at a thought. "We'll stage out of King's Crossing, I have an old friend there." She went on, detailing the plans she'd laid up until this point.

Roland was following the plans and chewing on his lip. "It sounds doable, lass. Why are ye asking me along, though? Ye did nae need me help with the last two."

Nightshade grimaced. "I did, with the second one. It had far more treasure than I expected, and I had to leave a lot of it behind. I need the help to empty the lair before the dragon returns. With the plan I have, we can only expect him to be gone for twenty four hours at most. I'll also need help if he returns before we finish looting his place."

Roland sighed. "Lass, we're very good, but do you really expect us to face a dragon in his lair and win?"

Nightshade grinned. "Yes, I do. We're better than those fools in Warren's Warriors, aren't we? They killed a dragon just a bit weaker than this one, and they did it cold, with no advance warning. We'll know what kind of dragon we're facing, what its weaknesses are and where it's coming from. We should win easily."

Roland paced back and forth around the room for a minute. "I need to use me forge for a bit." He went out of the library and used his ring of flying to fly down to the floor of the Aerie.

Nightshade had been young and rash when she made the plans for the Aerie, and for her it was perfect. Everyone else in the Winged Hammer, their adventuring group, found the total lack of stairs a problem however. Nightshade had solved that by creating a ring for each of them, that used the Earth node under the Aerie to allow them to fly. Roland had been dubious at first, but a year or so later, he'd bought a ring of flying from a mage in Waterdeep, and now wore it all the time.

Nightshade grinned as she looked out over the Aerie and launched herself up to her private quarters. If Roland was going to think about it while he was forging something, he was seriously considering the idea. Hopefully, he'd go for it.

Nightshade wanted to take everything, not leave half of it behind again. After all, there were a lot of books she didn't have yet. She sat down at her desk and pulled out a scroll. She skimmed it again, checking her facts again.

Nightshade was very nervous about this scroll, as it was her first attempt at writing some thing to be sent to a publishing house. It was a travelogue, a description of all the places she'd actually been to in the last fifty years since she'd left the valley. It talked about the hazards and the local governments, and everything she thought a person should know about a place before they visited the locale. Nightshade sighed and put it away. She'd take it into Waterdeep after they returned from this mission.

She then looked at the plans for the school they were building at the foot of the Aerie. The Winged Hammer, Nightshade and Roland's adventuring group had gathered enough of a reputation that young people were coming to them, asking for training, and they'd seen a chance to make a steady income. Roland would be training the fighting men, and Nightshade was going to training the bards and rogues, while Xavier Blacklegs would train the mages.

Xavier was one of four people that had joined the Winged Hammer over the years and stayed. He was a mage of no small ability and a cleric of Mystra as well. The other members of their group had begged off teaching, as they were not terribly social people. Nightshade had agreed, knowing that just a few years ago, she'd have agreed with them. She grinned.

Her outlook had been changing recently, and she wondered if it was because she'd finally come of age, by her people's standards, or if she was simply growing up. She laughed at that notion, knowing that Roland despaired of her ever growing up and stood up.

She jumped out of her door, allowing herself to fall nearly to the floor before opening her wings and heading for her private exit. This exit, spelled to only allow her and one guest with her to use it, led to the top of the Aerie.

This was Nightshade's private area, as Roland had his forge and Xavier had his workroom.

Tens of thousands of gold pieces had gone into forming the Aerie. The sides of the mountain had been shaved and the spell casters in the group had practised certain spells over the entire thing, leaving the sides as smooth as glass and lightly coated with grease permanently.

The top had been levelled off and Nightshade had worked hard to make a grove with a clearing in the centre, and a small pond. This was Nightshade's grove, the place where she practised the worship of Eilistraee as she wished, following the tenets of her religion faithfully.

She had had only three visitors up here in the ten years since she'd finished it. All of them were Drow clerics of Eilistraee from nearby Waterdeep, or more properly, Skullport, the hidden city under Waterdeep. Nightshade had needed them to properly consecrate the grove to Eilistraee, and since then, it was her refuge from the world.

Nightshade stopped thinking about other things as she entered the grove. She left her gear and clothes at the edge of the grove and walked into the clearing. She centred herself and began dancing. Dancing was a form of prayer to Eilistraee, and Nightshade danced like few others in the world.

Using her wings as much as her legs, she rarely touched the ground, a study in grace and fluid motion. She concentrated on the things she wanted as she danced, The health of her friends, a chance to make a difference, all the things she wanted, that she never told her friends about. She danced, and felt herself entering the trance, where she was not entirely on the earth any more, but half in another world. She'd never found out where she went when this feeling came over her, and she hadn't really tried, figuring it was a gift of the Goddess, and should not be treated as a specimen for dissection. The only thing she knew was that when the dance was ended, she would be refreshed, as if she'd been resting for a week and ready for whatever the world could throw at her.

An hour later, a serene Kal'Droth dressed again and dropped through her door into the Aerie. She went to the library and a few minutes later, Roland joined her. He sat down in the reinforced chair that she'd had made for him after he broke two of her chairs sitting in them with his armour. "Let's do it, lass."

The two friends smiled at each other and started their planning.

_**The Aerie floor, three months later.**_

Roland sat in the middle of the dragon's hoard and smiled. Gold and silver coins shifted under his weight and he looked at Nightshade, who was lying on an exotic rug worth maybe ten thousand gold and reading a new book. Her wings were slowly flexing as she read and Roland grinned. He reached for a ruby and tossed it at her. Nightshade didn't even notice and he threw another one a little bit closer to her. This one bounced up and fell on her book.

A few seconds later Roland went blind as something hit his helm with a solid thunk, and stuff squirted in the eye slits of the helmet. He sighed and took it off, looking at the cream pie that covered the front of the helm. He started cleaning it, looking over at Nightshade, only to see that she was already back in her book. "Lass," he said.

Nightshade frowned, but marked her place and looked at him. "What?" she said irritably.

Roland grinned as he dug up a double handful of gold. "When are we doing this again?"

_The bard stopped, taking a drink of the cup that had been by her side all night. She was feeling the strain of so much talk, but the men around her were still listening._ "_What happened to the two of them after that?" The speaker was the same man who had asked her what she was._

"_They still live in the Aerie, just outside of Waterdeep, on the other side of the continent. I have seen the Aerie, when I was flying into Waterdeep, and even seen Roland of the Golden Hammer, once. To this day, they make a living robbing evil dragons and dracoliches. How long they will be able to do that is a matter of some debate, as the anger of those beings grows. __Right now, the evil dragons have a bounty of one million gold to anyone that kills either of the pair, or five million gold to anyone that brings the pair to the dragons for them to do things to, before the evil dragons slay them."_

"_If you have the ability, they have a school, where they train some of the finest mercenaries in the world today, fighters and rogues of the greatest skill, trained by Roland and Nightshade. Roland's weapons are widely known among adventurers today, with people signing up on a two year waiting list and paying a million gold for one of his weapons."_

_The bard smiled, thinking about the pair. She looked out the window, noting that the sky was greying. "There are hundreds more stories about them, about the dragons they have robbed and they things they have done, but we will save those for another night, as the sun is cresting the horizon and it is time for me to sleep."_

_She stood up, collecting the hat that had sat at her feet though the long night. By the weight of it, she knew that she'd done well tonight._

_"Good night, good folk, and may your gods watch over you."_


	3. Shadowstalker

_**Book two:**_ _**Shadowstalker**_

_ It had been three days since the bard told the story of Nightshade and Roland, and the demand the next two nights had been for music, not stories. It had been the same tonight, until just after midnight. It was a slow night, with barely twenty people in the tavern, and she was seriously considering moving on, to another town and another group of customers. _

_"Bard, I would ask you about one of your kind," came a voice from the shadows and she looked up. A human male came out of the darkness and tossed a gem coin in her hat. "Tell me about Shadowstalker."_

_She stared at the coin, one of the rarest of coins. Made with a gem in the centre of a platinum ring, it was worth a hundred regular platinum coins. This human was paying a year's earnings to hear this story. She looked at the man, and the hair at the back of her neck stood up. This man was cold, dangerous in a way that said he'd done things and seen stuff no being should know about. He was a tall human, well over six feet she judged, and broad through the shoulders, with an easy grace that spoke of a master swordsman. She checked and he was wearing a longsword, with a wire wrapped hand grip. She frowned. This man had money and skill. Why did he want to know the saddest story in Kal'Droth history?_

_The rest of the patrons were watching the bard, and no one could miss the sorrow that crossed her face. "That is a grievous story, sir. Are you sure you want to know it?" The man simply sat down and watched her intently. He didn't speak again, waiting on her to start. She pulled a lute from her back and played a sorrowful tune on it. "Not all of our people are as good as we wish. Sometimes, there is evil, even in a heart once true. Sometimes, that evil gets away with things before we catch them. Shadowstalker was born of such evil, and redeemed by blessed love."_

Winglight launched himself into the air with a shrill cry of joy. The young boy was going home for the break. Kal'Droth training went on for three months and then the fledglings were free to go home for a week and then the cycle would start over. This had been the first time Winglight had been away from his home and he was looking forward to telling his mother everything he'd learned in the last three months. He frowned slightly as he flew toward his home. Father had been acting a little differently just before Winglight had left, and he hoped father was back to normal. Winglight landed on the porch that was the only entrance to their home and rushed inside to find his father placing decorations for a party. He spun, surprise on his face. "Winglight, you're earlier than we expected. You must have grown very strong in the school."

Winglight smiled, looking for his mother. He hugged his father and looked at him. "I have improved a lot, the instructors say, but I will be of the agile fliers, not the stronger ones."

His father smiled, tousling Winglight's feathery hair. "Nothing wrong with that, son. Your mother and I are both faster than we are strong. It is only to be expected." He smiled. "I need to go get your mother. Stay out of the party food," and he winked, in the way he had when he was going to help Winglight do something his mother might not approve of. "However, I believe your mother made the seed cakes two days ago, and they are not party food."

The young boy smiled. Seed cakes were one of his favourite treats. He dropped his training gear in his room and took a second to look in the mirror. Winglight was a slim boy of average height, much like any other Kal'Droth boy, until you looked at his eyes. Most Kal'Droth had the feathery hair and gold or silver eyes of the Avariel ancestors that had gifted them with wings. One in a thousand had the brilliant eye colours of the Elven races, and Winglight was one of those. His eyes were an impossibly bright blue, like the finest of sapphires. In a few years, when the fledglings started to go through puberty, the girls would be very attracted to those eyes, but for now, they were just an oddity, as he was the only one of the current fledglings that had them.

He checked his appearance, wanting to look good for his mother and went into the the cooking room. He saw the party food to one side and smiled. It was customary for the family to gather when a fledgling returned from his first schooling term, and give advice and small gifts to make the training easier. He smiled again, and found the seed cakes sitting off to one side. He took two and went to sit in the gathering room.

Winglight's home was much like any other Kal'Droth home, having been grown out of one of the large Shardan trees that the Kal'Droth cultivated. When a new house was needed, the druids carefully shaped the new dwelling, taking care not to overburden any one tree with too many homes.

Winglight sat on the padded rail that was comfortable seating for a race with wings and nibbled on his seed cake for a second, savouring the taste. The fledglings spent most of their time in the woods, and the food was made by the fledglings. Needless to say, it was not as good as his mother's cooking, especially the baking. He grinned and looked around, wondering where his folks were. He finished the second seed cake and yawned.

Strange, he hadn't thought he was this tired. Winglight fell over with a thump as the sleep powder in the cakes worked its will on him.

His father came back in the house just minutes later and stood over the sleeping boy. The cold calculating look he gave his son was nothing like the look with which he'd greeted him. He took a large sack out of a storage place and emptied the bodies of three Kal'Droth onto the floor and rolled the boy into the bag. The rest of his preparations were already finished and it only took a couple of minutes to set the candle under the string and tie off the flasks of fire gel so commonly used by adventurers and people that needed to start long burning fires.

He lit the candle and watched it burn. It would burn through the string in about ten minutes, which meant it was time for him to leave. He picked the sack up and went out of the house, lifting off without even looking around. He had to be far away from here when the fire started, because a fire in a Shardan tree would bring everyone in the area.

Winglight woke up slowly, and lay there for a minute trying to figure out what had happened. He was lying on his face and the ground under him seemed to moving. He tried to stand up only to stop as his wings brushed the roof of where ever he was. He blinked, trying to clear his head and looked around him.

He forgot everything as he did, because there were two elves sitting next to him. At least he thought they were elves. He'd never actually seen an elf, or anyone that was not a Kal'Droth, but they fit the description he'd learned in school. Slim and graceful, with eyes much like his own, but very pale skin and no wings. He flicked a glance ah their ears, making sure they were not humans, but they had ears like his as well. Definitely elves.

"Are you quite done staring at us?" one of them asked, and he blushed.

"My apologies, but I have never met one of the Elven kind and I was a little surprised to see you." Winglight looked around the small room he was in. It was about twelve feet wide and twenty feet long. It was made of wood on all sides, even the roof and floor. There was a single door at one short end and other than that, there were only the people. Winglight had noticed the elves already, and now he realized there were three other people in the room with him. Two, he decided, had to be Halfings, by their size and the last was a dwarf. He looked at the room, wondering why it was swaying and what that sound from outside the room was. "Where are we?" he asked one of the elves, beginning to fear that this was not a dream of some kind.

The elf looked at him. "You're in a slaver's wagon, boy," he said bluntly, "on your way to be sold in the Chult slave markets."

Winglight stared at him, not believing what he'd just heard. Panic began to rise in him as he looked around, finally noticing that there was no way to open the door from the inside. "But that's impossible," he said desperately, looking around. "I was just taking a nap before my training party."

"You've been napping for two days. We were beginning to wonder if you were going to wake up."

The other elf finally said something. "I would say that whoever dosed you with the sleeping drug didn't measure it very well, or simply didn't know that you can overdose a child very easily."

"He'd have been better off not waking up." This speaker was the dwarf, who sat near the end of the wagon. He raised a hand to scratch his nose and Winglight saw that he wore chains on his wrists. The dwarf saw him staring at the chains and grinned mirthlessly. "I tried to escape. I was lucky, in some lights. I didn't kill anyone, so I was merely beaten and chained. My friend killed a guard in the attempt, and they roasted him on a spit. Took him four hours to die, or stop screaming at least."

Bile rose in Winglight's throat, but before he could be sick, horror and panic overwhelmed him, and he collapsed into a swirling darkness.

Winglight would never remember the next ten days. He spent them in a state of shock, retreating into his mind to avoid the horror that his young life had become. They were not let out of the wagon for any reason, with meals and chamberpots being passed in at intervals. Winglight used the chamberpot when it was needed, at least for the first day, but that was rare, as he couldn't bring himself to eat often. Winglight might have been able to deal with being enslaved, but no Kal'Droth born could spend so many hours without stretching their wings and remain sane.

Wings have muscles, like any other part of the body, and they need to be worked regularly or they cramp and tighten. By the end of the second day, Winglight was in a pain that only grew, and by the end of the fourth day, Winglight was no longer sane, nor sentient. The only thing that kept him from attacking the other slaves was his inability to move without sending waves of agonizing pain through his shoulders and wings.

Since he made no sounds, the other slaves left him alone, until the third day in a row that he didn't eat, when the female elf tried to give him some of the watery stew that had been served. "Hey, the food is here." She frowned as she got no response and bent over to look in the winged one's eyes. She looked and jerked back with a small cry. Her companion jumped, nearly spilling his food. "What is it?" He saw what she'd been doing and sighed. "Is he dead?"

"Dead?" she said slowly, "no, not physically, but he might as well be. There's no mind in there any more." She shivered as she remembered the utter emptiness behind those sapphire blue eyes. Even the coldest psychopath has something in their eyes, even if it's nothing more than hate and cruelty. There was nothing behind the eyes in that shell. She said a prayer to Corellon Larethian, asking that he release that form to whatever afterlife he'd believed in. Then the practicality of slavery turned her away from the motionless body. She split his portion between her companion and herself.

_**Eleven days later, somewhere in Chult.**_

"Everyone out. Now!" The slaves stumbled out of the wagons as the whips cracked and slave traders yanked stiff bodies out, making them walk on legs that were stiff from days or in some cases, weeks of lying on straw.

One of the slavers was making marks on a parchment as they opened the wagons and at one wagon, he stopped. "There's one more. Some kind of freak, a drow with wings. Get it out here."

One of the guards looked in the wagon and saw the dark shape lying against the wall. He reached in and grabbed the body by the foot and dragged it out of the wagon, throwing the light boy on the ground.

The body felt itself falling and the lizard brain reacted, flexing the wings in an attempt to fly. Somewhere deep inside in his own mind, Winglight was jerked out of the fantasy that he was living. Nothing in the last ten days had taught him about this kind of pain, as wing muscles that hadn't moved in days suddenly tried to support him.

_The bard shivered, taking a drink of her ale, only too aware of what wings that hadn't moved in a couple of hours felt like. The pain of ten days of not moving was purely unimaginable to her. She knew she'd rather be skinned alive. It would hurt less. She brought her voice back under control and looked at the human that had paid for this tale._

"_How do you know so much about his captivity, and what he went through?" The man's question was abrupt, and cold,and the bard's trained ears caught the undertone of challenge._

_She stared at him. "I am not a tutor, here to answer your questions. You'll find out at the right time, when the tale gets to that point." She stared at him for a few seconds, but he said nothing and she continued her tale._

Winglight didn't know where he was any more, or, right then, even who he was, but he knew that he could fly and that the sky was right above him. The only thing stopping him was pain. He opened his eyes and saw the sky, a brilliant blue, with no clouds and heat thermals for riding everywhere.

For the first time in Winglight's fifty years, he knew what it meant to want something more than life itself. He **_had _**to be up there, away from pain and things he didn't understand. Winglight gave himself up to the reflexes, the lizard brain that all beings have, and let it deal with the pain.

Something touched him, and the mindless boy reacted. Primal instinct only knows three ways to deal with anything.

The being touching him didn't excite any mating urges, and the pain was too great for that anyway.

The same went for food, the pain was simply too great to consider food right then.

That left the lizard brain a single option. Millennium ago, the Avariel had talons, until the ability to use your hand in delicate manoeuvres erased them, but even today, the Kal'Droth have thick nails, hard and strong, which most Kal'Droth keep clipped short.

Winglight had not been clipped in nearly two weeks and his nails were nearly half an inch long. He raked the man holding his arm with them, with strength born of madness and pain.

Luck caught his one hand, and the nails raked across the man's eyes, opening them up and blinding him.

Ill luck caught his other hand, tearing the man's throat open, washing the boy in blood as the man staggered, his agonized cries stopped when blood filled his mouth and neck. Winglight knew nothing of this then, not of the pain or the first time he killed a man, but he would remember later.

Somehow, he managed to lift off, and he flew straight up, wanting nothing more than the open sky.

He never stood a chance.

The slavers had collected fliers before, and they knew that many of them tried to escape the same way. He hadn't gotten ten metres high when the net dropped on him and he was dragged down. It took four slavers to subdue the thrashing body and it was done by clubbing him into unconsciousness.

Most of the slavers and slaves ignored the common scene, but far above the yard were two men. The first had watched the scene in boredom, but the second had seen something that caught his eye. "Is that a winged drow?"

The other man looked down. "It could be. We get them occasionally. It might be one of the others though."

The first man glanced at him. "Others? There are more black elves than drow?"

"We got one a few years ago, an adventurer. We kept him for nearly six months, trying to pry the secret of where they live out of him, but he resisted, and finally died silent. The transcripts are in the library."

The first man was watching the boy struggle under the hands of four full grown men, and noted that the boy was giving them trouble. His eyes narrowed at an old memory, and he turned to the other man. "I would like to see those records, and I will buy the boy, right now, no training."

The second man blinked, glancing at the scene below. "He's wild, fresh taken and still free in his mind. Why would you want him?"

The other man simply stared at the scene below as they dragged the limp body away. "Because he is wild. Right now, I can meld him into the finest assassin ever to walk the world, or fly in the skies."

_**Six months later, somewhere in Thay**_

"Harder, pigeon, harder, or I'll skin your feet!" The trainer watched the boy struggling to lift a load nearly twice his own weight, trying to lift it to the assigned landing place on the third floor of the building.

Winglight no longer tried to escape, but neither was he reconciled to being a slave. He'd been told that his next escape attempt would result in his wings being cut off, and he shrank from the thought of seeing the wind currents and not being able to fly. Not that he had given up hope, but the next attempt had to be the last.

He learned for the trainer, not to please him, but to find out if anything in the training could help him escape. He finally got the load he was carrying next to the wall, where a slight current ran up the side of the building from the Alchemist's furnace in the lower regions and got his load up to the third story balcony that was his target today.

Despite the circumstances, he felt a glow of pride. That was a large load for any but the strongest fliers, and he'd done it. He looked at the sky, restrained from taking off and flying away by the knowledge that the collar around his neck would shock him if he exceeded the boundaries of the compound. That collar had to go. Then, he needed a map.

Well, he needed a lot more than that, but he'd be willing to run with the collar off, a map and a knife. He find a way to get the rest of the things he would need to find one of the travellers. He knew the tales of the travellers, as all in the valley did and he knew where they'd been living when he was sold.

He mantled, silently snarling at that thought. He remembered that conversation well, when he found out exactly how he'd ended up in the slaver's cart. The two men from his arrival at the Slaver's compound were walking along the line of cages.

Most slaves were kept in regular cells, but there some that had to kept in special pens. Centaurs and Wemic bound for the gladiator pits of Neraki lived side by side with the very monsters they would be fighting. The boy was out here because he went insane when you put four walls around him. He would fight and struggle from the moment he was forced toward a building until he was unconscious, and then he would wake up and start struggling again.

The man who had purchased the boy stopped at the cage that held the winged elf. "What do you plan on doing with this one, My lord? He's very wild and a definite escape risk."

The man watched the boy for a minute, noting the way his wings were flexing, as if the dark skinned boy would fly away, cage and all. "I know, but I thought I would take him to Blade and have him trained. If it doesn't work out, Blade will let us know."

The proctor nodded, making another note on his parchment. He looked up again at the winged drow in the cage. "Where did you find a winged drow, anyway, Mi lord? That seems to be a rare thing."

The slave owner nodded. "That it is, and a good thing, too. The damn Drow would be hell to deal with if they had wings. They're bad enough as it is." He looked at the boy, who was ignoring them, or appearing to. "But this one isn't a Drow. He's a Kal'Droth."

The proctor frowned. "What is a Kaldroth, Mi lord?" he asked, stumbling over the unknown word. "I've never heard of them. Where do they come from?"

"According to the reports I read, they are descendants of the original race of Dark Elves, the ones that did not rebel against Corellon Larethian. They never went into the Underdark and somewhere along the way, they grew wings, much like the Avariel." The slave owner turned away from the boy. "As for how I got this one in particular, his father sold him to a passing caravan."

The proctor raised his eyebrows in surprise. "His own father?" The slave owner shrugged. "After you do this for a few years, nothing anyone does to another person surprises you. The father claimed they had too many children and this one was unruly and a chronic liar." The slave owner laughed then. "It's a pity the father was as stupid as he was, though. He drank the tea he was offered, and they had two slaves for free, but the other slaves caught him stealing food in the open pens and tore his wings off." He shrugged. "He didn't survive that."

The two men walked away, stilling making small talk about the different prisoners and when they came from, leaving Winglight to think.

Why? What had happened to his father, that he would do such a thing as this to him? Winglight got on the perch they had finally brought in for him when it became apparent that Kal'Droth couldn't sleep lying down.

They could, for a night or two, sleep on their bellies, but only for a few nights, as the position drained all the blood from their wings. A Kal'Droth soon showed signs of distress if they had to sleep lying down for more than a couple of weeks at most.

Winglight got on his perch and fluffed his feathers as he closed his wings around himself. When he was certain no one could see him, he cried silently. He'd been dreaming that the other Kal'Droth would find him, but the only person that knew what had happened to him was dead.

Somewhere down in his soul, Winglight grieved for his father as well, although he would not have admitted that to anyone then. He may have gone crazy, but he was Winglight's father, and Winglight had forty years of good memories of the man his father had been.

When he was done crying, he started thinking. If he wanted out of this pit of the Abyss, he'd have to get himself out. He thought for a minute about trying to enlist the aid of another prisoner or two and then gave that idea up. If a boy's own father could turn on him, Winglight was not going to trust some stranger with something as precious as his freedom.

That was the start of more than a dozen attempts to escape that only ended with the threat to remove his wings. He'd been beaten for every attempt, but since the beatings never came close to matching the pain he'd felt during the trip after he'd been taken, he ignored it.

"Pigeon! Get down here. You have training to do. Quit daydreaming and get down here." Winglight was rudely jerked out of his memories as his trainer decided he'd had enough time to recover. He dropped, flaring his wings at the last minute, and gliding the thirty feet to his trainer. "Pigeon, your new owner is here. Act right, boy, because if you annoy this man, he'll kill you slow and painful." The trainer turned toward the large house, telling his charge to follow him.

Winglight couldn't repress the shudder that passed through his body every time he had to go inside a building, memories of the terrible trip he had nearly died on still giving him nightmares. He stilled it after a second and followed the trainer. A new master meant new possibilities for escape.

The trainer, whose name he never learned, led him into the atrium and to the man that had bought him half a year ago. He was standing with another man, and Winglight took a second to look at him. The man was watching Winglight, and for a minute they stared at each other.

Winglight saw a half human, half something else. He didn't know what this being was, but he wasn't fully human. His eyes were a reddish tint and his skin had the same red hues. When he talked, you could see that some of his teeth were pointed, much like a shark's teeth.

The half thing saw a skinny boy, definitely elven and with the black skin of a drow. Two things said he was not a drow though. Those wings were never made for caves and unlit areas. The other thing was hander to explain, but the boy didn't move like a drow. Drow learn to move in darkness and they have certain habits as they move, much as long term soldiers always seem to be marching. This boy didn't have any of the mannerisms that he had long ago catalogued in the drow.

"Listen to me, boy. I'm going to teach you things, and you will learn. You will not try to escape, because in about an hour, that collar you wear will simply cut your head off if you try to escape. I don't have time to toy with you. You will do as you're told, or I will kill you on the spot and get another boy." He looked at the boy and noted the slight tremor in the youngster. His voice was low, calm; no threats here, just one person telling another some minor thing. "I am, just so you don't spend the first two weeks worrying about it, a half Fang Dragon. Now you know, that's the last we will talk of it. Be ready to leave in the morning."

The half dragon walked away without another word, leaving the trainer and the boy staring after him. "Pigeon if you don't learn anything else from me, learn this; Don't annoy that thing."

The boy was still looking after the man. "Who, or what is he?"

"Ten years ago, Artemis Entreri was the finest killer south of Longsaddle, and then he got all crazed following some drow from around the Spine of the World. Shadow is his replacement, at least until Entreri comes back." The man hesitated, as if either of the killers could hear him. "I think he might be the best after he comes back as well."

_**Two years later, somewhere in Chult.**_

Winglight frowned as he waited in the Inn room. Shadow should have been back two days ago, and this situation was not good. The half dragon had never been more than an hour late before, and Winglight was unsure what to do now. It wasn't like he could just go looking for the man that held his life in the palm of his hand after all.

Not that Winglight gave a damn about the man, but he was determined to live. Someday he would not be a slave, and then people would pay for everything that had happened to him over the last three years.

Shadow had spent a year teaching him how to be a killer, and then put him to work. Winglight remembered each of the nine people that had died at his hand, and one day, Shadow would pay for making him kill.

He paced around the room again, and then cast the spell that made him invisible, opening the window. He couldn't leave the room, but he could at least look out over the city. He didn't know what city it was, or even where it was, although he knew it was in Chult somewhere, simply by the way people were dressed. The jungle he could see and the characteristic robes told him that.

He was still looking out the window when he noticed something odd nearly twenty minutes later. The streets were emptying out rapidly. He frowned and watched the streets rather than the sky. He focused on the currents of air in the street and found exactly what he was beginning to expect. Two blocks away, the currents swirled around something that couldn't be seen.

Winglight frowned and cast a spell he didn't think Shadow knew that he knew. Suddenly he could hear everything that was going on down there. Winglight hissed as he listened to a broken sounding Shadow telling somebody that the 'damn drow with wings' had possessed him and forced him to try and kill the Guild Master.

Winglight knew better, but this double-dealing and backstabbing was what he'd come to expect from everyone. After all, they were out for themselves first, and anyone else only if it was worth something to them. Winglight assumed that Shadow had been caught and that he'd made up this story to avoid being fingered as the assassin. If he was in fear for his life, he might be able to get off with a light sentence, or none at all, if they left him unguarded for a minute.

Winglight went back to listening to the men talk and froze. The men down there were not going to try and take him alive. Shadow was telling them that the winged demon had mind magic powers, and could control a person with a look.

Given that unhappy thought, the Captain down there was not willing to allow Winglight time to possess any of his soldiers and he was telling them to kill on sight. Winglight stared at the man that had cost him his innocence and his soul, by making him chose between killing others and dying himself. Now he was selling Winglight for a chance to be free a little sooner, or to get away with the things that he'd done.

Winglight looked at his options and found none. If he left this room without Shadow's permission, the collar around his neck would cast whatever spell was in it and separate his head from the rest of his body. At least, that was what Shadow thought would happen.

Winglight looked at the soldiers and mages gathering outside and came to a decision. He fluffed his wings, reaching under his feathers for the wand he'd hidden there during one of his assassinations. It was a wand of dispelling, and he was going to try it on the collar.

If it was strong enough to dispel the magic of the collar, Winglight would win, and be free. If, on the other hand, it didn't succeed, he would be dead, which is why he hadn't done it before now.

Winglight had no idea if the wand would work or not, but right now he was out of options. Winglight pointed the wand at his neck and spoke the activation word.

Shadow was laughing at the foolishness of these humans as he helped them plan the attack on the inn room and his slave. He'd made a mistake and been caught, but a couple of hours under the flames and knives of the interrogators had convinced them that he spoke the truth.

Of course, they didn't know that his dragon blood gave him an incredible pain tolerance, and that the things they'd done to him were painful, yes, but not a third as bad as they would have been for a human. He looked at the inn again, annoyed at losing his best apprentice. The ability to fly made him an excellent choice for killing people in towers and other high places, as the upper levels were always guarded with lesser wards than the lower levels.

He shrugged, and turned his mind to his own escape. When the guards entered the room, Winglight would obey his orders, and begin killing everybody who entered. The guards would fight back, but Shadow was certain they would lose at least a dozen people trying to kill the boy. The guards would not allow that to go unanswered, and Winglight would not leave the room alive. That was the best thing for Shadow. He really didn't need the boy being questioned. The last of the guards were moving into position when everything went to hell.

Winglight erupted out of the window, arcing up and over the building. A second later, he was hovering above the building. A quick gesture and some unheard words, and there were five of him in the air, all dropping down and pulling weapons from sheaths.

One of the figures levelled off at head height and flew down the street heading for the place where the invisible Shadow and the leaders of the guard stood. Shadow knew that this was the real one, as he had taught the boy this manoeuvre and he knew what was coming. He tensed, knowing he was about to have a chance of escaping.

A guard with a spear stepped in front of the flying figure and Winglight arced sharply, twisting in mid-air and lashing out with the whip he carried. The lash wrapped around the guard's neck and half a second later, Winglight was jerking the man along by his neck, having come to the end of the whip at just over sixty kilometres an hour. The guard's neck was broken instantly and he was dead before Winglight started climbing, angling up and starting to turn back, whipping the guard out and using him as a club.

The dead body hit the end of the whip again, at nearly one hundred kilometres per hour and the whip sliced through his neck, sending the body tumbling through the invisibility shield the guard commanders were hiding under.

Not expecting the criminal to be able to see them, invisibility was the only thing they were under and the body slammed into a commander, throwing him into the other one, over the prone body of the assassin, who had dropped to the ground as soon as Winglight had started flying up.

Shadow was not sure how Winglight had gotten out of the building without dying, but he would worry about that later. He rolled over and grabbed the belt knife of one of the unconscious guard commanders. He cut both their throats first and then found the key to his shackles. He stood up and was about to check the bodies when something fell at his feet.

He recognized it and looked up slowly. "How did you remove it?" he asked, conversationally, wondering what was going to happen now. Shadow knew full well that Winglight hated him, and hadn't tried to kill him yet, only because he thought the collar would kill him.

The collar was not important any more, lying broken at his feet.

Winglight smiled, and Shadow started getting ready to fight. That smile was not nice, or even sane. "That mage you had me kill had a wand of dispelling, and before he died, he gave me the word to command it." The boy in the air grinned mirthlessly. "I have to thank you for betraying me like this though. I was afraid to try it, in case it was not strong enough to do the job."

"Betray you?" Shadow tried to say, and stopped as the insanity in those blue eyes grew.

"You told them that I controlled you, that I was the master here," he said and then stopped. His wings flexed and he rose in the air, looping over and dropping a vial on a guard that had been creeping up on the flier.

Nothing seemed to happen for a second and then the guard convulsed, screaming in unbearable pain. Those closest to him saw it first, but soon the entire street could see the holes being eaten in his body, and the goo he was dissolving into. It took nearly a full minute for the screams to stop.

"The next person that approaches me will get the really painful version of that acid," the Kal'Droth announced to the street as calmly as if he was saying the sky is blue. He turned back to Shadow. "Where was I? Ah, yes, I believe I was talking to you about betraying me. I would expect nothing else from you, but I still have to do something about it."

The smile became wider and slightly mocking. "After all, you trained me well. 'Never allow anyone to betray you and live' were your words, I believe."

Shadow tensed, waiting for the boy to start the fight that would end with one of them dead. Winglight didn't attack though, he merely smirked at Shadow. "I know you're expecting me to try and kill you now, but I had a better idea."

He gestured, and Shadow saw his own arm raise, shooting a beam of light at the boy. He realized it was an illusion almost instantly and was confused about what it was meant to do. Winglight stiffened, and convulsed, nearly falling from the sky, and Shadow was even more confused.

It had been an illusion, and hadn't really done anything to the boy. What was he playing at? Winglight landed, and crumpled to to ground. He looked up at Shadow from between his wings and only Shadow could see the smirk on his face, a smirk that disappeared an instant later, as a green glow covered his eyes.

Guard Corporal Genters was the senior living guard and he watched as the two killers confronted each other. He saw the winged demon confront the half human freak and throw a collar at the ground. He heard the human ask how the winged one had removed it, and he knew that the human had lied about being under the other being's control, a line of reasoning that was borne out a few minutes later, when the human freak shot the winged demon with a magic beam of some sort and the thing fell from the sky. He was passing orders to the guards when the winged thing stood up, tension plain in every line of its body.

"Yes, master. I will kill them all." It turned, looking at the guards and Genters swore.

"Duck and cover, everyone!" he shouted, as he hit the ground, rolling under a table. The next fifteen minutes would give Genters fuel for nightmares for years to come, as the winged demon tore through the guard, killing them with an ease that belied his youthful appearance.

The mages went first, as one of them stood up and used a wand to fire three streaking globes of light at the flier, that impacted and seemed to hurt for a second, before the thing went up, and gestured again. A lightning bolt fell from the clear sky and fried the mage where he stood, but before the body had hit the ground, the winged one was dropping, reaching out with the whip and coiling the lash around the neck of another mage. A quick jerk and that mage was down, the loose lolling of his head speaking his fate as clearly as words.

It was a guard's turn as the winged thing flew by him and another of those little vials hit him. The guard standing next to him ended his suffering quickly, before he was more than half way dissolved.

Genters was the target of the next attack, and the winged thing snaked out a rope with a lasso at the end and caught his foot. In an instant, Genters was dangling upside down from the rope and rising swiftly into the air. He huffed as he hit the side of a building and the breath was knocked from his body. His head struck the building an instant later and he went limp, barely conscious. He felt himself fall, striking the hard surface of the roof and breaking his leg. The pain cleared some of the fog from his mind, and he watched the winged thing approach. He was fighting two battles, one to breath and the second to free his dagger.

He'd be damned if this monster would kill him without even a fight. He looked at the demon, seeing its face, where a greenish glow covered the eyes. "All must die," it said in a voice devoid of personality. It stepped up and Genters swore in his mind. He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The winged thing raised a rapier and hesitated, the greenish glow fading for a second. Brilliant blue eyes stared at Genters for an instant, eyes filled with desperation and fear. "Stop me, I don't want to kill." the thing begged, in a high voice, and Genters realized that this being was as young as it appeared to be, a child of its kind.

That instant of hesitation was all he needed, and he struck out, watching it close its eyes and take the blow that sank his dagger into its chest. The winged boy fell back, and for an instant, it smiled, at peace, before the green glow returned, and the thing exploded into motion again, diving over the roof. Genters dragged himself to the edge and looked over.

Two more guards and another mage died before the slowing child was hit by three crossbow bolts at once. The boy fell and as he hit the ground, he simply disappeared, as if he'd never been.

Shadow had not hesitated when Winglight started killing, he started toward an alley, only to be struck by a spell, frozen in place. The mage that had paralysed him stepped up in front of him. "Maybe you being unconscious will break your control of the demon."

He raised his staff and struck the half dragon across the head. Unable to move or do anything, Shadow was forced to endure four more blows before he slid into unconsciousness. The last thing he heard as he welcomed the blackness was the mage muttering to himself. "I must tell the interrogators that he can take immense amounts of damage."

Winglight fell to the ground, too weak to pull the bolts from him. He lay there, looking out over the forest he lay in. When the guards had shot him, he'd used the one use ring of teleport he had. It was worthless now, but it had done its job. He had not had a destination in mind when he used it, just a forest, some place safe. Winglight had already known he was going to die, since he'd let that guard stab him on the roof, but it was worth it.

Shadow would never escape the justice he was about to dealt. Chult had some extreme ways to insure that people didn't get away with flaunting the law, such as it was. He stared at the sky, wishing he could be there when Shadow died.

Winglight slid peacefully into the darkness, having the oddest hallucination as he went into death.

The last thing he saw was a human female with long red hair bending over him, with her hands glowing a bright leaf green.

_The bard stopped, and stretched, her wings flaring as she moistened her throat and held up her cup for another round. The human was still watching her. "I will wait to hear what happened to him after that, but I would know what happened to the half dragon."_

_She shivered. "Chult is not like most nations. They kill quick and easy, true, but sometimes, they have other ways of dealing with their enemies. Shadow lives still, in a cage that anyone can see in the square before the Inn of the Winged Child, the same Inn that Winglight had been in. The guard told his story to the King, and he, wroth that he'd been played for a fool, hired a Psion, a being that can make magic with just his mind."_

_The Bard looked at the human, wondering in the back of her mind why he wanted to know this story. "The Psion reached into Shadow's mind, and tore his deepest fears, the ones that we never look at, from the bottom of his mind. He made them real for Shadow, and locked him into a never-ending loop, so that he would see those fears, live those those fears until the day he died."_

_The bard waited a few seconds while people thought about having to live in your deepest nightmares until you died. When she thought enough people had understood that horror, she gave them the last little piece. "Then the King paid to have Shadow made immortal and put him in that cage, welding it shut, so that he couldn't open it, ever."_

_One of the tavern guests hissed in horror. "He'll live in his nightmares forever?"_

_The bard nodded, looking at the fire. "Until the day the world ends, and this plane of life is gone, he will hang there, living out whatever his nightmares are."_

_There was silence for a few minutes, while the men thought about that. The bard looked around, noting that more people had come in while she talked, and the tavern was full._

_The human that had paid her nodded. "A fitting vengeance, for what he'd done to the boy. Now, I would know what happened to Winglight from there, because he did not die, that much I do know."_

_The bard sighed, thinking about what had happened to Winglight from then on. "No," she said softly, as the tavern grew quiet again, everyone listening to her, "but it might have been better for everyone if he had. Especially for Winglight."_

Lady Amanda Lionscourt, Paladin of Tyr, and heir to the Barony of Marid, was riding through the Forest of Mir on her way home after a mission in Volothamp, on the coast of the Shining Sea. She was taking her time, in no hurry to go any where on this glorious day.

This was a day to be appreciated. It was warm, but not hot and the sky was clear. Here, under these great trees, it was a wondrous twilight, looking almost as if you might pass between the planes just by stepping around the next tree.

Her fanciful musing were interrupted by the feel of arcane magic very close. She looked up, the dreamer in her gone, replaced by the warrior. She heard a soft thud and a cry of pain, and started toward the sound carefully, aware that it could be an ambush.

She came around a tree, and there was a child, of what race she didn't know, but he was a child. He was broken and battered, with the light of life leaving his eyes as she saw him.

She moved forward, calling on Tyr as she dropped to her knees. What had happened to this child? She was cataloguing his injuries even as she laid her hands on him, feeling the dimmest of life in him.

Three crossbow bolts in him, a stab wound in his chest, scorch marks from arcane spells, this child had been in a serious fight. She had to stop thinking about it though, as she threw herself into another battle, one that would see him live or die.

She prayed, and bandaged him, washed his wounds, used most of her healing spells and knew she was losing. He was slipping away from her, despite everything she could do. She frowned and put one hand on her amulet, offering up another sort of prayer.

She bent back over her patient, easing the last crossbow bolt out and using a minor healing spell to close the wound as she felt the presence of the being she'd called erupt behind her.

"Greeting, Paladin." She looked over her shoulder, her hands still working.

"Greetings, Deva Averondal. I would ask for your help with this boy."

The Astral Deva, one of the celestial beings that served Tyr, looked down at the Kal'Droth. She reached, feeling the boys spirit. Finding nothing evil there, she bent and knelt beside the Paladin.

Reaching out, she laid both her hands on the injured boy. Her hands flamed with power and Lady Amanda watched as wounds closed and disappeared without even leaving a scar. When she was done, the Deva looked at the human woman. "Where did he come from? I sense that you have been in no battles this day."

The Paladin told her about feeling the arcane magic and finding the boy. The Deva frowned and looked at the boy. "These are wounds of battle, but this is a child. He carries items that can be used in evil ways as well. This is a puzzle I would know the truth of."

She bent her head and closed her eyes, concentrating for an instant. Lady Amanda felt another presence fill the clearing, overwhelming her and the Astral Deva without even trying and she looked up. She stared for an instant at the being that stood there and dropped to her knees. "Welcome, Solar."

The Solar Angel that was looking at her was close to ten feet tall and had a richly coloured golden skin, that matched the eyes of a bright topaz colour. "Rise, champion of Tyr. It is not needed, that you kneel to me. We are both servants of Tyr, you and I."

The two angels spoke for a minute, with the Deva pointing to the still unconscious child. The Solar cast a spell, and the three of them lived Winglight's life in seconds.

When it was over Lady Amanda was still processing what she'd learned when the Solar looked at her. "You have saved this one's body, Paladin. Now, you must save his soul. He walks on the edge of falling into the darkness. You have changed what would have been, by keeping him alive. He would have died here, had you not done anything, and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on the path he takes from here." The Solar bent his eye on the sleeping boy. "He has great capacity for good, and the training to be as evil as Marcus. You must make the difference in him. He is your responsibility now."

With that pronouncement, the Solar disappeared. Lady Amanda looked at the Deva she'd called. "It seems I have a new mission," she said, smiling at her friend. "I am glad that it doesn't involve the battlefield at least."

The Deva was looking at the Kal'Droth. "Are you really so sure of that?"

_**Two days later; the clearing in the Forest of Mir.**_

Winglight woke up slowly, until memory came flooding over him. He kept his eyes closed, trying to figure out where he was, and how he was still alive. He frowned as he realized he was on a perch bed, a special sort of bed that allowed winged creatures to sleep upright without damaging their wings.

That was a bit strange, but he could feel the sunshine on his body and hear the calls of nature around him, which meant he was outdoors. His curiosity finally got the better of him and he opened his eyes, raising his head and looking around.

He was indeed on a perch bed, which stood out in this clearing in the forest, since it was a very nice perch, made of some reddish wood he'd never seen before and smoothed out to be as comfortable as possible.

He tensed as he realized that his armour was gone and he didn't have any weapons on him. He looked around, and blinked. His weapons and gear were on the ground right next to his bed, and someone had cleaned them and put them away neatly in their various sheaths. He heard a sound and his head came up.

A human woman was entering the clearing with a bucket of water. She looked over at him and smiled. "You're awake. How do you feel?" He slipped off the perch and reached for his gear, but a wave of weakness washed over him and he fell over. The woman stopped, watching him. "Do you want help?" she asked gently.

He tried to stand and failed. "I do not, but it seems that I must have it," he said bitterly. She came over and offered him a hand. He strapped his favourite knife on first and she helped him back onto the bed.

When he was on it, she turned away, turning her back on him to start making dinner. As she worked, she talked to him. "My name is Amanda Lionscourt, and I already know you are called Winglight. I found you here two days ago, and you were hurting so I healed you."

"What do you expect to get from me?" Winglight wasn't fooled by her manner. Nobody ever did anything for nothing.

Amanda turned and smiled at him. "Friendship?" That short exchange was the beginning of seven days of very strange recovery for Winglight.

Amanda told him everything that had happened while he was unconscious, and the Astral Deva even appeared once, talking to him politely, as if they were acquaintances. They didn't say anything when he checked his gear, and admitted taking the various poisons and other things that could not be used in any sort of good purpose. Amanda even gave him a half a dozen gems to pay for the things she took.

She also told him what the Solar had said, that he could be good or evil, and that she would prefer for him to be as good as he had the potential to be.

The whole situation was so far out of Winglight's experience that it took him most of the week to begin to understand that Amanda wanted nothing from him, except to be a good person.

It was on the fifth day that he finally flew again, a short flight that left him gasping for breath and weak in the knees. Even then Amanda simply helped him back to the perch. "Don't worry about it. You will soon recover your strength," she said, "after all, you cannot come that close to dying and not expect some need to recover."

Winglight was beginning to understand that he'd been very close to dying indeed. "Why did you save me?"

Amanda shrugged. "You were a child, and you were dying. You were not evil, so I saved you. I would do the same for any other person that didn't have an aura of evil about them." She sighed, looking into the distance. "I used to save everyone, until I saved a woman who had a minor feel of evil about her. I spoke to her many times as she recovered, trying to help her past the evil, but she ignored me, and several years later, I was forced to kill her, as she was doing bad things to people, and I am sworn to oppose evil when ever I can." Amanda's eyes were sad as she thought about the people that she'd tried to save and failed. "Now I do not help evil, even in saving its life and hoping I can change them."

They talked about many things over that week, with Amanda taking the lead and telling him about places she'd been and things she'd seen. He told her a few things, but most of his life was not really something anyone wanted to know about, being a mass of pain and fear.

Amanda told him about being a Paladin, and what she did, but didn't preach at him. When he asked why not she just smiled. "Right now, you need me, until you recover. To preach at you now would be putting you under an obligation to listen, and you might say things that you really didn't feel, just because you felt an obligation. I will wait until after you are healed, and capable of going your own way before I tell you about the Gods, including the one I follow, Tyr."

Winglight stared at her. "Do you mean that you will not force me to go with you, after I am well?"

Amanda shook her head. "I will admit that I would like us to be travelling companions for awhile, but I will not force you. I am not your mother, nor am I a slaver. You are more than capable of defending yourself, and I have no call to tell you what you can or cannot do." She blushed. "Even those things of yours that I got rid of, was not to keep you from using them, but to ease my way. They had an Aura that was making my head itch, and I could not find evil while they were here. I paid you for them and if you decide to go your own way, you can buy more."

By the seventh day, Winglight could stay aloft for two hours at a time and Amanda had a short talk with him after dinner. "I have to be getting back to my home, and I want to leave in the morning," she said. "Are you going to come with me?"

Winglight nodded slowly. "I will. I do not know enough to be on my own yet. I would ask that you teach me what I need to know."

Amanda smiled. "I will, and right gladly. Along the way, maybe you will find a calling to follow my path."

Winglight laughed, and shook his head. "Follow your God, maybe, but not your path, Amanda. You hedge yourself around with too many rules and restrictions for my taste. I have been paying attention these few days."

Amanda shrugged. "Not all can walk the path of a Paladin. It is a hard life, but I think it is worth it." She reached back and brought out her map. "We are here," she said pointing to a spot on the map. "We need to get to this point," she continued, pointing to another spot, a town called Teziir in a land called Cormyr. "What route would you suggest we take, remembering that for the first week or so, you will not be at your best."

Winglight would always remember the next four months as the best times of his life. Amanda treated him as an equal, while teaching him all the things he would need to know. He knew more than she did about how to kill, about sneaking around and hiding, but he didn't know anything about using stores or talking to people without assuming they were going to abuse him or try and cheat him.

Amanda taught him love. Not the love of a man for a woman, but of of their fellow man, or another, for he began to think of her as his lost mother, and she accepted the role, treating him as she did her younger brothers.

She taught him to give people the benefit of the doubt, for most of them were good, or at least not out to kill you. They had several fights, because there were evils in the world, but Amanda taught him that he did not have to add to the troubles of the world.

They travelled together and everything was good, even after they reached her home. A few people didn't like the idea of the woman that would be Baroness Marid being so close to some strange winged thing that looked like a drow.

Lady Lionscourt slapped that thinking down hard, and taught him how to behave in society, and how to ignore the snubs of those that would never be as open-minded as they could be.

Three years after they met, Winglight was happy for the first time since he had been in the Kal'Droth valley. He had friends, and people that loved him, and after the incident with the Harpies, he was even being respected for something besides being the Lady's sidekick.

She still went out on missions, and he went with her, working along the edges to cover her back and protect her, for the Lady had one flaw that she didn't understand, and he couldn't explain to her.

She had never been evil, nor accepted evil, and she could not understand them the way Winglight did. Many of the things that evil people did confused her, even though it seemed perfectly clear to Winglight. He worried about that, because it was a chink in her armour, and he was right to do so.

They were on their way to a temple of Tyr that had asked her to train a few of their people when Winglight was killed and Shadowstalker was born.

_The bard stopped again, seeing the sun coming up. This tale still had a long way to go, but none of her audience looked as if they were in any hurry to go anywhere, and she was surprised to see that the tavern was standing room only, with people even sitting on the stairs to the rooms upstairs. The human male that had asked her to tell this tale was still sitting in the shadows watching her._ "_What I have just told is all known to several of the Travellers that saw Winglight and Lady Lionscourt while they travelled together. From here on, it's based on sightings and stories, and may not be as reliable as the previous part of the story." She took a deep breath and flexed her wings before starting the end of Winglight's story._

Winglight was with Lady Lionscourt on the way to the temple of Tyr when he was asked to make a slight detour. A small village had found the body of a Kal'Droth, and they wanted him to supervise the burial or whatever rituals the Kal'Droth had for their dead.

Since it was only an hour out of the way and Winglight could catch up by nightfall, Lady Lionscourt went on ahead. Winglight finished with the burial of Moonsong, the Traveller that had died and flew away, following the road that Lady Lionscourt was supposed to be on. He flew on until nightfall without seeing her.

He was not worried yet, figuring that he'd simply missed her along the way. He camped on the side of the road and was up with the sun. Breaking camp, he flew back to where he'd left her and started forward again, flying low, so that he would see anything unusual. About an hour later his sharp eyes caught the gleam of something moving and he started to go higher as he looked at the spot the motion had come from.

He looked, and the four men with crossbows aimed at him caused his former skills to kick in. He dove, pulling his wand, one of the few he kept on a regular basis and used it. Now the only way those men could hit him with any type of arrow was if they were using magic, and Winglight was already looking for traces of magic.

He didn't find any and that changed the entire complexity of the combat. Winglight turned and dove at the men, wondering why they had attacked him in the first place. He snapped a shot with his bow, hitting one of the men in the shoulder and then he was too close for archery.

He dropped the bow and drew two of his knives, slashing at the two men closest to him. He hit the one on the right, who failed to duck in time and his knife opened the man's throat. The two men left had thrown themselves on the ground and they got up in a hurry as he twisted and spun in air, turning around to come back and rage overwhelmed him. One of the men had just pulled a dagger that was entirely too familiar to Winglight.

He'd given it to Amanda as a Winternight gift just four months ago.

He sped up and swept by the two as they hit the ground again, but this time he threw his right hand knife, burying it in the back of the man that didn't have Lady Lionscourt's knife. He turned again, coming back and this time he used a newer weapon, one that Amanda had given him and taught him to use.

He landed as the man threw himself down again and clubbed the man behind the ear, rendering him unconscious. Winglight looked around.

The man with the arrow in his shoulder was down and as he discovered, dead. From the blood around the injury, he must have hit a vein or artery, because it looked like the man had bled out.

The other two were dead as well, the one with his throat cut and the one with Winglight's right hand dagger still buried in his back. Winglight was tucking his sap away as he looked around and he collected all the rest of his weapons before searching the four men.

They all had more gold than their clothing suggested they should have, and besides the knife, Winglight found a necklace that belonged to his friend and a ring.

When the last survivor woke up, he was tied down and Winglight was watching him closely. "What happened to Lady Lionscourt?"

The flash of fear in the man's face was all the answer Winglight needed. He began cutting the man's clothing off, telling him about all the ways to keep a man alive while you skinned him and before he had gotten the man's shirt off he was babbling.

Baron Hasden, the local noble, was secretly running a slaver's ring in the surrounding area, and the Lady had been taken for the trade, at least until the Baron had figured out who he'd taken. She was deemed too dangerous to keep and the Baron had spent the night torturing her, before killing her early this morning.

These four had been sent to ambush Winglight and bring him back to be dumped wherever the Baron had dumped the Paladin.

Winglight killed the man and stood. He took a step and launched himself into the air, rage and despair growing in his heart as he flew. He found the Baron's keep and by the time he did, Winglight was gone.

Exactly what happened in the keep that spring day will never be known. When the boy who had been Winglight reached the keep, there were thirty-nine people in the keep and four prisoners, waiting for the next slave caravan.

He set the prisoners free, escorting the four out of the keep with only a single death, a guard who's wanderings brought him around a corner at the wrong time. In the forty minutes he was with the prisoners, he spoke not a word, using gestures and expressions to get his point across. After the people were in town, the silent man flew back to the keep, where the townspeople could hear the alarm bells ringing, meaning that they had probably discovered the missing prisoners or the guard's body.

The townsfolk listened to the stories of the prisoners and headed for the keep, prepared to storm it if needed, to stop this madman that was making people disappear.

At the keep they found the gate wide open and thirty-nine dead bodies inside. The Baron had been pinned face down to the floor with knives and his skin had been carefully flayed off his back. Two ribs on both sides had been broken off and his lungs had been pulled out and left on his ruined back. That was not what had killed him though, it was the pile of chamber pot contents on each lung that had made it impossible for him to breath, and finally killed him.

Winglight had gotten the location of his friend's body from the baron before he killed him, and he appeared at Teziir with her body in his arms. He laid her down carefully and stood up. One of the retainers called him by name.

The Kal'Droth they knew as Winglight had turned to him and they stood there, a chill passing through every person that could see the eyes of the Lady's friend. The eyes that had shone with happiness and humour just two days ago were dead and empty, lit only by the fires vengeance and anger ingrained in the newly born man's soul.

"Winglight is dead. I am Shadowstalker."

_The bard looked at the human. "Except to the evil people that he slays now, using all the skills he learned from the rogues and assassins that trained him, he has not spoken to anyone since. That he speaks to his victims is merely conjecture, as he seems to know too much about them not to be interrogating them, but since the day he became Shadowstalker, no one living has heard him speak."_

"_It is known that he carries a black bow, symbol of the Elven god of retribution, Shevarash, and questions to the clerics of the god make them shrug. According to them, the god recognizes the Kal'Droth as a worshipper and a cleric, although no one knows how or where he learned enough about Shevarash to swear fealty to him."_

"_What is known, is that he uses every skill he has, poisons, torture, and all those other skills the forces of evil taught him to kill people that are evil. He hunts them, as they hunt the good people of Faerun, and he shows them all the mercy they show others."_

_The bard sighed, thinking about innocence destroyed, and about a young boy who lost everyone that loved him twice, to the forces of evil. "Is he right, in what he does? Most people say no, that to use the tactics of evil is to be evil. Some people though, point to the fact that he has suppressed more evil in the last twenty years than any five other people and say that he is doing the right thing, that evil will never give up, and this is the only way to destroy it."_

"_What do you think?" asked the human, staring at her oddly, "is he right in what he does?"_

_The bard frowned. "I want to say no, but I have been to the Monastery of Mercy, where the victims of Marcus the Destroyer are kept for the rest of their lives, and I have seen first hand what evil does to others." She looked at the human. "I could not do what he does, even if I knew how, but I am not in his mind. If I had lived though what he went though, before he even went though puberty, I might be standing next to him, helping him take evil down."_

_The human nodded, considering her words. "I asked about Shadowstalker because I am a Manhunter and I have been offered a commission to hunt him, and kill him. I will turn it down because he is not hurting anyone good and I only hunt the ones that are evil."_

_He stood up and started toward the door, only to turn and look at the bard. "If you can contact him, you might want to let him know that there are hunters that will not turn that commission down, not for the money being offered on it." With that, he slipped out of the door._

_The bard blinked. Why on earth would anyone think she could contact that Kal'Droth? He was lost in his vengeance, and as far as she knew, no other Kal'Droth had spoken to him since he had started on his path._

_She stood, showing that she was no more than five foot tall, slender and graceful in the way of all elves, with only the imposing wingspan making her seem larger than that. She stretched those wings now, careful not to hit anything or anyone as she spread her wings wide, relieving muscles too long still._

_She looked out of the window, seeing the sun half cresting the horizon._ "_It seems that I have talked the night away again, my friends, so I will be hunting for a bed now. I thank you all for your attention," she said as she picked up the jaunty hat she placed at her feet when she performed, and noted a surprising heaviness to it._

_"I must also thank you all for the means to eat another day," she said and bowed to the people still in the tavern._

_She was on her way out when the tavern owner stopped her. "Might I have a word with you, bard?"_ _She nodded, and he led the way to a small office. He went inside, leaving her to follow. She eyed the small room dubiously, but stepped in, staying close to the door and leaving it open._

_The owner nodded. "I see that a dislike of small places is a trait shared by more than Shadowstalker," he said quietly. "I can understand that. A mage friend of mine took me flying a few times, before age and damage stopped my adventuring for good. Tis a wonderful feeling."_

_The bard nodded, looking at the elderly human. He was somewhere in his sixties, maybe more she thought, and with a heavy frame packed with muscles that still held a sense of strength, despite his comments about his age and condition. Somehow she thought that this man might surprise any footpad that only saw the age, and thought he had an easy mark. "I am a creature of the open sky, good sir," the bard replied, "and places such as this are not to my liking. Perhaps we can get to business, and go on about our ways?"_

"_Actually, I was hoping our ways might be along the same path for some time to come. My name is Conor and I work for Tammar the Librarian." He grinned at her expression. "Strange job for a tavern keeper, I know, but before I was a tavern keeper, I was one of his questers."_

_The bard's opinion of the man before rose sharply. Tammar's Questers, the people who sought out knowledge of things for Tammar, were some of the most famous adventurers in all history._

_Singly or in small groups of not more than four, they crossed every known plane, and no few planes that no one else had ever heard of, seeking some small bit of knowledge not already recorded in the great library._

_Few of those people lived to stop, and fewer still could ignore the call of distant horizons to retire. She frowned at the man before her, matching his looks with the tales she knew of Tammar's people. "You're Conor Taughlin, the man that infiltrated the palace of Marcus the Destroyer to recover some book he'd stolen."_

_The other man nodded. "I am, and Tammar has asked me to ask you if we could write the stories of your people up as a history, for the great library."_

_The bard hesitated. Conor was watching and guessed at the reason for her hesitation. "Tammar understands that your valley home is still a closely guarded secret, and that is why I have not simply written down the tales you have spoken over that last few days. We understand that some things will need to be held back, and Tammar has asked that you write it down, while I make it a history, rather than a collection of tales."_

_They spoke for an hour, and finally came to an agreement. The bard would write the tales one at a time, and they would go over them that way. When both of them were satisfied, they would send it to Tammar._

_She went to her lodgings, wondering if she'd done the right thing, but she could find no harm in the truth being readily available to anyone that Tammar would let use the great library, and with her writing the tales and history of her people down, she could insure that no hint told anyone where to find the valley that most Kal'Droth still called home._

_There were now two small colonies in high places, hard to reach without wings, but they could be abandoned in an instant, if the need arose._ _The valley, though, was home to all, and the place were their race had begun, and it was simply too important to the Kal'Droth as a race to be lost._

_While their defences were growing, the winged people simply didn't have the ability to fight in large groups, and had not been involved in a war since the Sundering, when the Drow were sent under the earth. They could not begin to defend the valley against even the smallest armed force, and they knew it._

_Right now, the valley's only defence lay in two things. First, it was nearly impossible to reach, even with wings because of the swirling winds that gusted in random patterns around the edges of their land. Even with the innate ability to see the patterns that the air made, thermals and drafts, all those things that made up the patterns of air, most Kal'Droth found flying out of the valley to be a difficult task._

_So far, no one using magic or wings without that talent had made it past those winds. She grinned, remembering her first flight out of the valley. She'd nearly hit the cliff, and she'd had two guides helping her. The rangers that watched the borders said that few people flew there with no difficulty._

_She stopped thinking about that and started planning the way she would write the book._

"_What was I thinking?" was her thought two weeks later._

_The bard was finding that writing a tale down was far different than telling it to an audience. Having Conor looking over her shoulder, correcting her grammar, asking for more details, wanting names and facts that could be verified and generally driving her insane was not helping any._

_She looked across the table where Conor was reading the latest thing she'd written and making more of those twice cursed marks that meant he wanted a change or more information._ _Conor finally looked up at her and smiled wryly. "This is not working, is it?" he asked, watching her closely._

"_Not in the slightest," she answered him, "but I don't know how to fix it either."_

"_I might have an idea along those lines," he said with a shrug. "I have run into this problem with other bards. Just because you can sing like an nymph, or tell a better story than most doesn't mean you have the talent to write, as you may have noticed."_ _Conor grinned at her expression, saying "I had to try, some people have the writing talent and never know it until they try to write something, and you might have been the same. Since you're not a writer, we'll do it the other way."_

_She sat up a bit and her wings flexed, raising in a way that meant interest. Conor filed that away for his report to Tammar on the Kal'Droth. Tammar had met a few of them, but the only one he'd met that had the ability to be a Quester had been overwhelmed by the ancient Elf, who had walked the world before the humans or dwarves had come to Grame Manifesto._

_Conor grinned, remembering the awestruck girl that had been unable to say a complete sentence in the old elf's presence, despite having faced dragons, undead and other things that no normal person would ever want to see, even at a distance._

_Tammar naturally wanted to know more about this race, deeming them worthy of study, and so Conor and every other Quester had to turn in a report on everything they noticed about them._

_Conor had been working closely with the bard, and he'd realized that it was not her face you had to watch to know how she felt, but her wings. He was frankly amazed at the amount of information you could learn about how she was at any time by the way her wings were held._

_He shook off that thought and explained what he wanted to do to her. "You'll go back to singing and telling the tales, lass, and I'll have a friend of mine recording the tales you tell. She'll put them in writing and you and I will go over them for accuracy and details." He grinned at her wry expression. "It's that, or you can keep writing the tales, and we'll be done about the time world ends."_

_The slightly built woman across from him thought about it for a second and nodded. "I'll do it, as long as you understand that I still have to pander to the crowd, and if they want songs rather than tales, I'll give them songs."_

_Conor grinned. "I don't think that will be a problem for the next two weeks or so. It just so happens that there is going to a gathering of Questers in the tavern. It's a regular thing we do, sharing information and details about current assignments with each other."_

_The bard raised and eyebrow at Conor. "Do you mean to tell me that there are going to be a dozen or more people like you in the tavern every night for two weeks?"_ _Conor nodded, his smile becoming a smirk as she sighed heavily._

"_Goddess save me."_


	4. Moonshadow

_**Moonshadow; Legend, Myth, Paragon.**_

_**The tavern, two nights later.**_

_The Bard settled into her place as the sun started its descent and looked at the crowd. She knew instantly that the gathering Conor had spoken of had started, because this was not her regular crowd. Most of the regulars were townsfolk, normal people who never had an adventure unless something happened to the town they lived in._

_Some of those people were here tonight, but there were nearly thirty people that had the look of experienced adventurers, that casual confidence that came from having been there, done that so often that the truly bizarre was normal to them._ "_Lass, I have a question for you, before you start tonight." The bard looked at the older grizzled man that had spoken and waited for his question. "Conor told us all that he had a Kal'Droth bard, and that you would be telling us tales of your people, but he forgot to mention one little thing, mostly because he never asked you. What is your name?"_

_The bard smiled, flicking a glance toward Conor, who was looking embarrassed. "I am called Windsong, good sir."_

_The older man frowned, looking at her. "You say you are called such, not that it is your name."_

_Windsong shrugged. "Every Kal'Droth has a Name," and everyone there could hear the capital letter in Name, "which is only known to your family and people you trust with it. To everyone else in the world, we have usenames, and that is our name for all practical purposes."_

_The man nodded, filing that bit of information away in his memory. "So, Windsong, what tale will you tell us tonight?"_

_Windsong smiled, pulling her lute from her back and tuning it with sure motions borne of years of experience. "I had in mind to tell you a myth, something no one can prove any more, saving only one, and no one knows if she lives still." The bard looked up and smiled at the absolute attention she had from the Questers. "Of all the Kal'Droth born, the outside world knows of a handful, and the valley people know of a thousand more, but only one name is common to both the outside and the valley, and that name is Moonshadow."_

_The bard watched with interest as two of the Questers sat up, staring intently at her. "I cannot prove much of this tale, only the beginning, written in the histories of the valley, more than seven thousand years ago."_

_**Moonshadow**_

In the days of Moonshadow's birth, there were still a very few of the Kal'Ranious left, but the end of that race was written plain for all to see. Many of the Kal'Droth were mated now, and they were thriving in the confines of the valley, more so than the Kal'Ranious ever had.

Despite changing their name, and the centuries of adapting to live in the valley without other peoples, the Kal'Ranious were Elves at heart, and they simply were not suited for the life the valley forced on them. The Kal'Droth on the other hand, were a new breed of being, and perfectly suited to living in this place. None of them could miss the things they'd never had, and as more of them were born with the ability to sense the currents and patterns of the winds that swirled endlessly around the valley, they could explore further than anyone had since the days they had been exiled here.

Moonshadow's birth was a remarkable first for one reason: she was the first Kal'Droth born of two Kal'Droth parents, both of whom had two Kal'Droth parents. She was considered the first true Kal'Droth, and watched closely as she grew up.

Of her early years, almost no tales remain, only the records of the valley, and they are more in the nature of histories, without the flavouring of a tale. One thing is made plain though, and that was that Moonshadow was different from any other Kal'Droth ever born, and even the ones that came after her were not as she was.

Moonshadow was faster, stronger and more agile than many full grown adults before she was in her sixty-ninth year, noticeably so. She exhibited other abilities as well, innate abilities than no other Kal'Droth before or since has had, and her command of the normal gifts of the Kal'Droth were great. She learned quicker than most, and remembered what she'd heard, even if she only heard it once. In fact, there was nothing she couldn't do, and by the time she was ending her first century, the rest of the valley had given up on trying to control her, or keep up with her.

No one was surprised when she simply disappeared.

Moonshadow had been restless for nearly a decade, flying as far out as any other, and wondering what was on the other side of the mountains she could see. Finally, she determined that she would go out and see what was out there. She laid her plans well, going into the old mines and scraping up gems and precious metals from them, knowing from the records that the people outside the valley bartered or bought things with 'money' a concept not much needed in the valley, and mostly gone.

Everyone in the valley had to contribute in the early days, and that had evolved into the current situation, where everyone did something, and put a share in the community pot. After you had done so, you could take things out of the community share, things you couldn't make yourself. A weaver might add a rug, and take an axe made by a blacksmith, while a farmer would add food while taking a chit for a healer's services for his family. Since you could not use the things and goods there without giving, it was a fair system, and few didn't contribute in one way or another.

Moonshadow knew she would be taking some of the things out of the valley and possibly never bringing them back, so she made things that would last, that could be recirculated over and over. When she was finally ready, she took stock of what she had and what she could do. Since she had no idea what the gems would be worth in the world beyond the valley, she took fifty or each of the gems, cut and polished, the finest she could finish and left the rest. She also took more than thirty pounds of the three metals that could be mined in the local mountains, gold, platinum and copper.

Besides the things she had, Moonshadow took several talents out of the valley. She was a good gem cutter, able to make fine jewellery and other gemstone things, including focuses for spells and wands. Moonshadow was a bard with some other skills, that much everyone knew, but very few knew then that she had studied everything in the valley, and knew at least a smattering of every skill she could learn.

Only one wizard knew something else about her as well. Moonshadow had gone to him for training in the ways of magic and during her lessons, they had discovered that she could absorb magic, and use the energy of magic as a blue magical fire. A little trial and a lot of error showed her the limits of this talent, and she didn't tell anyone about it, as it could be circumvented very easily, if you knew about it.

She took a spellbook from the mage as well, with his blessings. Moonshadow couldn't use most of the spells in the book, but the mage was certain that anyone with the talent she showed for magic would be able to work out the spells fairly soon, and he put a lot of very useful spells in the book, including scribed copies of spells that had been common before the Kal'ranious were exiled. She had not told him her plans, but it was obvious to him.

With any other person, he might have tried to prevent them leaving the valley, but Moonshadow was not any other person. If anyone could go out into the world and come back, this woman could, and if she couldn't, then the Kal'Droth needed to know that as well.

The day came that she was ready, and Moonshadow gathered her things and put them in the magic haversack that held so much more than it appeared to, while remaining light enough that flying would not be affected by the things she carried. Moonshadow paused at the edge of the Kal'Droth territory, looking back.

She loved her people, but the valley was too small to hold her spirit. She gave her home one last look and turned toward the outside.

In just a few seconds she was battling the gusting winds and swirling eddies called the Shearwinds that made leaving the confines of the valley so very difficult. Moonshadow was a great flier, easily the best in the valley, and still she was covered in sweat and shaking with the strain before she finally cleared the winds and could land in the forest covering the mountains outside the Aerie Valley.

She landed in a tree and rested, wondering which direction to go in. She finally chose to go south, as the cold winters of the valley indicated that it was in the northern part of the continent. Moonshadow flew for three days without seeing any sign of other people, and she was beginning to wonder if she'd gone the wrong way when she found her first sign of others. It was a rude shack, made of hewn logs, a sight that distressed the elf.

What manner of people would cut down a tree, rather than live in it? She took a minute to cast a spell of invisibility over herself, not wanting to show herself to these beings if they were evil, and flew closer. She saw the occupants of the building and landed in a tree to observe them. It didn't take her long to be confused.

These beings didn't match the description of any of the races she knew of. She ran through the list of characteristics she'd memorized before leaving the valley. They were not elves of any sort, nor dwarves, or any other race that she had ever heard of.

Lost in their isolation, the Kal'Droth had not known that another race had come to Grame Manifesto, a race called Humans.

She observed them for two days, and decided that she would continue, looking for a race she knew of, preferably elven. Her travels went faster now, as she could follow the trails of this race she didn't know, although she stayed out of sight of all the people on the trail. The trail soon became larger, and she saw more of the new people, many more of them.

Mixed in with them she also saw dwarves and a few of the elven kind she sought, but they were always around the new race and she avoided them. It was nearly a week later that she found her first elven community, and she settled into a tree outside the village to observe.

By the end of the day, she had decided to approach this group. They acted like the stories of elves in the histories, and they lived in the trees, not cutting them down like the others had. The next morning, Moonshadow landed outside the village and prepared two spells, just in case something went wrong, or she had to run. She took a deep breath and faced the village, quashing the nerves that said she was doing something wrong. She started toward the village.

Soveliss Nailo was on watch at the gate of the village and he was bored silly. The village was out of the way, had no real exports, and was simply too small to be important to anyone in his considered opinion. Soveliss was barely an adult by his people's standards, and filled with a desire to see more of the world than one little backwater community.

He glanced up as he caught a motion out of the corner of his eye and froze. He'd never seen a drow, but only one race of elves had that midnight black skin. He blinked, having never heard that drow had wings, but he knew his job. He shut the gates and sounded the alarm.

Moonshadow had seen the elf long before he'd seen her, and she'd had time to watch him for a few minutes as she walked slowly toward the gate. She'd seen the pure panic that had crossed his face when he finally looked up and saw her, and his actions directly there after.

She stopped and cast the first spell she had prepared, a ward against arrows and other projectile weapons and stood in the middle of the road, waiting for someone to do some thing. She really hoped they did something quick, because she really wanted to use a convenient tree right now.

Inside the gate, the village had come swarming at the alarm, and were listening to Soveliss babble about the drow on the road. One of the village elders frowned. Long ago, he'd fought the drow, in the Sundering War, and he knew they did not have wings, nor did they walk openly in broad daylight if they were planning something underhanded.

"Open the gate," he commanded quietly, and everyone that heard him looked at him. He shrugged, and spoke his mind. "If we are the starting point of some drow plot, we need to know it, and I am one of the last here that speak their language." He looked around, noting the unreasoning hate on many faces. "Besides, I have seen thousands of the drow, and I have yet to see one with wings. I would see this oddity for myself, and ask him how he gained wings."

Soveliss blinked, and muttered, "her. The drow out there is a female."

The elder nodded. "Her then. Open the gate, so I may see this for myself. It has been far too long since I saw something new, and this is very new to me."

The others looked at each other at his words, thinking they finally understood why the elder would risk himself like this. When one lived for as long as you could avoid injury or disease, after awhile you had seen most things, and studied them. That could lead to a terminal boredom setting in.

Elves might be immortal, but nothing helped them stave off the horror of decades of boredom. Among elves over ten thousand years of age, suicide was the leading cause of death, that and taking extreme risks, which amounted to the same thing.

The militia commander set two archers to cover the elder and opened the gate enough for him to slip out. The elder stepped out and looked down the road. He saw the winged being standing there and stared for a minute. She was indeed of the drow race, with that skin, but he'd never heard any tale of a dark elf with wings, and the girl in front of him definitely had wings.

Moonshadow saw him step out and she stared at him as well. He was old, with that air of calm acceptance that only came with having thousands of years of experience, and she bowed slightly, offering him the respect she would give any elder.

Aust Liadon saw the girl bow in an odd way, ans started toward her slowly, figuring that anyone that would offer courtesy like that was not going to cut him down without warning. He stopped a few feet away and nodded to her. He had been right about one thing, this person was just a girl, possibly not even of age yet.

Despite that, he could feel the sheer presence of her nearly as strongly as any elder. He had a sudden chilling thought. If she was a drow up to no good, and there were many more like her around, the village was in deep trouble. He reached into his memories and spoke in the old High Elven, that had been lost to the elven people since the Sundering. No one spoke it any more, since they didn't want to have even a language in common with the hated drow. "Hail and well met, traveller. I am Aust Liadon, elder of this village. May I know your name?"

Moonshadow nearly sighed with relief as the other elf spoke in the old version of the common tongue of the Kal'Droth. Few people knew the classic form of the language these days, but Moonshadow had learned it since she couldn't expect outsiders to speak the evolved form of this same language. "I am called Moonshadow, my lord, and it is my pleasure to greet you."

Aust blinked to hear such a young child, and young she was, with that pitch to her voice, speaking fluent High Elven. "I know it is unseemly to rush you like this, Moonshadow, but may I ask of your family and race? I have not seen anyone like you before."

Moonshadow estimated the age of the Elf in front of her. "You may, Elder, but it is a long tale in the telling. Will you sit with me, and partake of refreshments while I tell it?"

Aust hesitated, until an old memory came back to him. "Are you asking for the Hours of Peace, Moonshadow?"

Moonshadow smiled. "I am, and I am glad that the custom has not been lost to the outside world. I was worried about that."

Aust sighed. "Had you found a younger elf, my lady, it would have been lost knowledge to them. It has not been used since the Sundering." He examined her, thinking about the way she looked and acted. She wore bright colours and carried a harp and a lute, sure signs of a bard, for while someone pretending to be a bard might carry one instrument, it was highly unlikely that they would carry two. Her phrasing was strange for a drow as well.

The drow referred to the surface world as being above, or by euphemisms, yet this child called it the 'outside', a term generally used by people in enclosed areas, like prisons and natural enclosures. He was beginning to have an idea about what he was seeing, but he wanted to hear this tale first hand. "I will accept your offer. Would you mind if I brought a few more with me? I wish the other elders to hear this tale for themselves." Aust smiled wryly. "I can talk, but the telling of tales, and the ability to do them justice is not one of my gifts. It would mean far more coming from you."

Moonshadow grinned at him, recognizing the unspoken comment that her looks alone would make a far more convincing tale than anything she could say. "Bring them along, and we will sit and talk of things." He started to turn away, and Moonshadow stopped him. "I would know how many you bring, Elder. I must lay out the food and drink, and I need to know how many places to set."

"There will be four of us, and another, younger elf, who commands the militia, and will want to see and hear you for himself."

Moonshadow cocked her head to the side, puzzled by the one word, it not having been in her vocabulary. "What is a militia?" she asked, "It's not a word in our language."

Aust stared at her. "Do you know any of these words? Armies, war, murder, soldiers, combat?"

Moonshadow frowned. "Murder I know, although it has been three hundred years since there was a murder in the valley."

Aust shook his head in wonder. A sentient race that didn't have a word for war in their language. No other race could say that, not that he knew of, and that meant that they didn't have war wherever this lady was from. It is the nature of verbalizing beings that if they have a concept, like war, they will have a word for it. He sighed.

That would change quickly, if they made contact with other races. Maybe he would have a quiet word with the woman and let her know about some of the more violent tendencies of the world. She was far too trusting of others.

He went into the village and called for the others he wanted at this meeting. While they came forward he had a word with the officer in charge of the guard right now. He told him that they would be having a meeting in front of the palisade, and not to do anything. "It is an old ritual we are doing, from before the Sundering, and I do not think it will be broken by the young lady." The elder looked at the guard commander. "I will be very upset if anyone on our side breaks this peace. Even during the Sundering, this peace was never broken, by either side. I will not be responsible for breaking a tradition. Do we understand each other, Captain?"

The guard commander frowned. "I don't like you having all the elders and the commander of the guard out there at once, but I will not allow your meeting to be disrupted by our people."

Outside the walls Moonshadow was busy preparing a place for the meeting she was about to have. She made a mental note to try and find some spells to transfigure things as she laid out a cloth and dug around in her magic bag. She had known that she would be meeting with people when she left the valley and she'd brought a few things that would make people feel more at ease. She put down a platter and six matching cups. All of the items had a simple poison detection spell on them and would glow in the presence of any poison. There was no real need for these things in the valley and she had not had to give much for them, but she figured they would be invaluable in her meetings with others.

She reached into her bag and brought out her favourite treat from the valley, a kind or sweetbread that would not offend anybody, as it was made entirely of grains and fruits. She sighed and dug her best bottle of Tree Dew wine out of the bag. She looked at it mournfully. It was the only one she had, as collecting enough Dew to make it was a long and expensive task, but she couldn't offer anything less than her best for this meal.

She finished and waited for the people that were just coming out of the gate. She took a minute to study the people walking toward her.

Aust of course, was in front and she concentrated on the others.

The 'militia' commander was easy to spot. A younger male elf, he was wearing a sword and two daggers in plain sight and Moonshadow was certain that there were more weapons on his person somewhere. He was dressed in some odd metal chain shirt that she assumed was armour of some kind. She was slightly envious of the wealth showing in that single piece as the cost of metal in the valley made that chain shirt he was wearing worth a year, possibly two year's of shares in the community pot. She passed over him and looked at the others.

All of them were older elves, although none was as old as Aust but only one of them stood out as anything more than elders. That one was a female and she had hatred in her eyes as she stared at Moonshadow. Moonshadow didn't know why this woman hated her, but she obviously did. Moonshadow made note of her and looked at the other two.

One of them looked curious and had the intent stare she recognized from scholars confronting a new puzzle. That one would be asking questions forever, she thought, but they would be intelligent questions.

She frowned slightly as she looked at the other one. This man was a complete blank, allowing nothing at all to show on his face or in his eyes. Moonshadow made a mental note to watch him. Open hate was easy to deal with, but people that didn't show anything to you left nothing to work with and could be your best friend or your worst nightmare.

As the group reached the place Moonshadow had set up her cloth, Moonshadow bowed, holding her wings back and down, so she could see the group. "I am Moonshadow Cinthallia, of Clan Astarri. I would ask that we sit and eat in the peace of mutual wants and in good faith."

Aust smiled faintly, hearing a ritual that had not been spoken by the elves in more than twenty thousand years, and he dredged the proper response out of his memory. "I am Aust Liadon, of Clan Liadon, and these are my companions."

The woman showing open hate was Lia Xiloscient, and she merely nodded abruptly at her introduction.

The blank man was Tharivol Holimion and he bowed slightly as they were introduced.

The scholar was Qillathe Amakiir and she smiled slightly, her eyes on Moonshadow's wings and Moonshadow could almost see her cataloguing the anatomy that would allow an elf to fly.

The commander was Aramil Nailo, and he bowed, but like Moonshadow, his eyes never left her as he did. He didn't look hostile, but she could tell her was wary.

Moonshadow sighed. Hatred and open suspicion was not a good way to begin this meeting. She didn't understand why they had these problems, but she would find out.

Aust finished introducing his companion and completed the ritual that would bind them to do no harm to each other for one day after the meeting ended. "We will sit and eat, talking of matters dear to us both, in peace and with an open heart."

Moonshadow remained standing as they sat around her cloth and then poured a small amount of the Tree Dew in each cup. She noted the puzzled looks some of the elves had over the small amount she poured. Aust picked up his cup, mirroring Moonshadow's actions and the other followed his lead.

Moonshadow held the cup, warming the wine with her body heat until it reached the right temperature. The wine in her cup glowed for a second, emitting a well remembered fragrance, the scent of home to Moonshadow and she breathed it deeply, seeking the touch of the familiar to calm her nerves. The others watched in surprise as their cups did the same as they held them.

Aust breathed in the scent, as he'd seen Moonshadow do, and caught the smell of a forest, although it had some exotic scents that he didn't recognize, driving home the fact that this being was far from home. He shot a glance at Qillathe, smiling slightly as he could see that she was reining in a host of questions by sheer will alone. The thought crossed his mind that she might very well explode soon if she was not allowed to ask Moonshadow something.

The commander was examining the cup curiously, feeling the magic on it. He found a single stone that didn't look like any of the others on the cup and pressed it. Suddenly he could feel magic at work and he knew that his drink was safe, with no poisons in it. He noted Moonshadow looking at him when he activated the cup and he looked at her, seeing the slight challenge that lay behind her eyes.

He nodded gravely and tipped his cup to her as he took a sip. He froze, with the touch of the wine on his lips. It was soft, sweet and sour all at once, and suddenly he had a clear memory, from nearly five hundred years ago, of the day he was made the commander of the militia. He saw it again, remembering every minute of the pride and joy he felt, the responsibility for the village and his determination that he would never fail the people that trusted him.

He looked at Moonshadow, and saw that she was looking at something that no one else could see as well. The rest of them were lost in visions as well and Aramil sighed. No wonder the ... he frowned. That was not a drow, he was certain of that, but he had no idea what she was. He shook his head slightly and went back to his thoughts. No wonder Moonshadow had poured so little of the wine, if every sip would bring back memories like that. He found himself hesitating, not wanting to lose the feelings from that day. It had been a long time since he felt that way, and he was hesitant to lose it so soon.

Moonshadow was watching the group and spoke as she saw most of them looking at the cups hesitantly. "There will only be the one memory. Each sip you take of this will be a reinforcement of the memory you saw, so that it not lost to you. I do not understand all of the magic of the wine, but it is used to recall something of great importance, something that is relevant to the mood of the hour."

Aust nodded. Long ago, Moondrop wine would do the same thing, but the secrets of making it had been lost over the centuries. It had been a long time since he had had any of the wine of memories and he hoped to trade Moonshadow something for some more after the meeting was over.

Moonshadow waited until everyone had taken the second sip of wine, and spoke softly. "You may be wondering at my appearance, since most of you have never seen a dark skinned elf, and I feel quite certain that none of you have ever seen one with wings, as they are new in our race's history."

The others looked at each other and it was Lia, the woman that had shown such blatant hatred that spoke first. "Winged elves, no. Drow, black skinned elves we have seen too many times, and their hearts are as black as their skin."

Moonshadow blinked in open puzzlement. "Has Corellon Larethian then rescinded his exile of the Ssri-tel-quessir? I have not seen any signs of them."

Aust raised an eyebrow. He had not heard the original name of the drow in centuries. "I think we both have stories to tell. As our host, would you tell us of your people since the Sundering?"

Moonshadow nodded slowly, and reached for her lute. "I am no historian, and I only know one way to tell this tale, in the learning ballads of the bards I trained with." Moonshadow started with the simplest of the teaching songs and was soon lost in her performance.

The others were caught up as well, as the music and Moonshadow's voice swirled together, capturing them in the song. Elves had many forms of art and music, dozens of ways to make beauty and they were good at all of them.

The Kal'Droth, for many centuries had only one way to make beauty and they had pursued it with the same passion that elves in the outside had pursued all the forms of art. With this one form, no elf from the outside could match the art of the Kal'Droth, and Moonshadow was one of the best in the valley at song.

She finished her song and rested, watching the others come out of their reverie. Aust looked at her, considering the song, and what it had said.

Qillathe simply couldn't keep quiet any longer. "Are you saying that you are the first of the people from your Aerie to meet an outsider since the Sundering?"

Moonshadow nodded, "Saving only the Avariel that came to our valley and never left, yes."

Qillathe made a small noise, but Aust interrupted her. "Qillathe, there will be time for your studies later, if Moonshadow is willing. Right now, I think we need to tell her about her cousins, and what has happened to them."

Aust started speaking, and the longer he talked, the more distressed Moonshadow became. The Ssri-tel-quessir had become known as the Drow, a word that was made from the Elven word for traitor and Araushnee was now Lloth, a chaotic evil Goddess of the Drow and spiders. Corellon Larethian had not relented in his exile, but the drow were coming to the surface at night, killing and plundering people and things to take back under the earth to the land known as the Underdark. No one had yet met a Drow that was not evil, and it was assumed that any elf with the dark skin was evil, and most people on the surface fought with them on sight, simply to save themselves.

Moonshadow listened to the summary of the outside world's history and sighed. "What of Eilistraee's people? She was not, and is not evil. Has she no worshippers outside the valley?"

Aust frowned sadly. "If she does, they have remained hidden from everyone, as your people have."

Moonshadow sighed. "Then it would not be a good thing for my people to leave the valley in numbers at this time. Your races would see them as just another type of Drow and cause them harm."

The woman that had shown such hate was watching Moonshadow with a frown. "And what of your loyalty to those you call Ssri-tel-quessir? Would you not side with your cousins?" The group waited for Moonshadow's words.

She frowned. "I would not side with anyone that openly committed evil acts, but I also cannot believe that every single member of a race is evil. Could it be that the evil has the control of the Underdark at this time, and that somewhere down there are people who are not Drow, but Ssri-tel-quessir still?"

The commander spoke for the first time. "It could be so, but since the only ones that come above the ground are evil, it does not make any difference to us right now. If such a group does exist, and they can make peaceful contact with us, we might have to reconsider our notions, but until then we have to defend ourselves."

Moonshadow nodded slowly. She could see his point. Sometimes, giving an enemy the benefit of the doubt simply led to you dying.

Aust looked at Moonshadow. "What of you, personally? How were you chosen to be the one that came outside the valley and meet others first? Forgive me, but you seem to be very young for such an important mission."

Moonshadow smiled. "I was not chosen. I decided to do it. There have been thoughts of leaving the valley for several decades, and it will be several more before anything is decided, so I came out to see what the world was like. I was not expecting such hatred of my skin colour though, nor of a race. I will have to go back and warn my people that we may want to stay in the valley until this anger passes."

Aramil raised one slow eyebrow. "You are an optimist, if you think this anger will pass," he said bluntly. "As long as the drow continue to raid our lands, we will continue to fight."

"It will pass," Moonshadow said calmly, "in one thousand or one million years, sooner or later it will pass."

The group continued to talk, asking questions about each other's customs and ways, with only Tharivol remaining silent and Qillathe asking the most questions. She also gave the most complete answers and Moonshadow liked her. After an hour or so of talk, it was Qillathe that invited Moonshadow to stay with her for a few days. The others glanced at her and then at each other. Qillathe ignored them and Moonshadow accepted her invitation.

The meeting broke up shortly after that and Qillathe led Moonshadow into the village. Moonshadow was looking around as eagerly as the elves of the village were looking at her. Qillathe ignored them all and led her to a smaller treehouse set near the back gate. The next two weeks flew by as the two scholars explored each other's history and lives.

Moonshadow found that Qillathe was quick of mind, and able to follow a chain of logic to its conclusion.

For her part, Qillathe was astounded at the sheer intelligence of Moonshadow, and her leaps of logic, allowing her to take the smallest clues and make the right answer out of them.

She found the Kal'Droth had several differences from elves, most of which were related to their ability to fly. They had a limited darkvision and their lowlight vision was half of what it was for elves. Their visual acuity was remarkable, until you realized that sharp eyes were required when a Kal'Droth might be four or five hundred metres above the ground. Kal'Droth were physically a bit weaker than than elves from the waist down, but their upper body, backed by the muscles that allowed them to fly, was far stronger.

The Kal'Droth also had several innate spell like abilities, evolved over the centuries to help them hunt or fly better. They could outline prey in faerie fire, to make the prey easier to track from the air, and a type of mage hand, that could lift any object up to ten pounds. They also had a type of tracking sense, allowing them to detect life within twenty metres of themselves. By far, the one thing that made them very different from any other surface elf was the ability to see the patterns in the air, the currents and heat patterns that made up the shifting air. This was the one of their abilities that they could not turn off, and it made them see the world differently, as well as making it much easier to tell what the weather would be like, up to a week ahead.

The wings of a Kal'Droth were large enough to cover the body of the individual with, and in an adult would span between ten to fourteen feet from wing tip to wing tip. Even with those wings, Kal'Droth weighed less than an elf of the same size, since their bones were hollow, like the bones of other flyers that did not use magic to fly. The wings were mostly muscle and skin under the feathers, and thin, with thousands of small veins pumping blood through them to keep them warm. The downside of that was that if a Kal'Droth suffered a wing injury, it was difficult to stop the bleeding.

Most Kal'Droth had black feathers, the colour of their skin, but rarely, one would be born with wings the colour of their hair, which was white. Moonshadow was a bit different from most of her kind, having additional spell like abilities that no other Kal'Droth did, but she was unwilling to let anyone know about that, just as she hid the blue fire ability that she had.

During the time that Qillathe was learning about Moonshadow, Moonshadow was catching up on the history of the elves and the rest of the races from the surface of Faerun.

She learned about the Humans, who had come to Faerun from somewhere else, another plane of existence just thirty-five hundred years after the Sundering, and had been spreading across Faerun ever since. They had an incredible drive to do things, which most likely came from their short lives. A Kal'Droth born on the same day as a human would not even be an adult when the human died of old age, unless the human was one of the rare few that lived an extraordinary life span.

Like most elves, Kal'Droth were immortal, only dying of disease or injury. At least, they thought they were, as they had roughly the same childhood and adolescence, but the oldest Kal'Droth was only a few thousand years old right now, and they might start to age still.

Qillathe had many visitors during the weeks that the two of them studied each other, more than she'd had in the previous three hundred years. The two scholars were polite for the most part, even though they kept the visits to the absolute minimum allowed by manners. There was simply too much work to do to allow curious people to stare at Moonshadow for hours on end, especially since Moonshadow would not be staying long, a couple of months at most.

Moonshadow did end up staying longer than she had planned, simply because the rainy season started while she was in the village, and while Moonshadow could get her feathers wet, she much preferred not to, as drying them out took roughly forever and her flight was difficult until they did dry.

It was just in the beginning of the winter that Moonshadow flew south, intending on spending the winter months exploring the southern lands of Chult and the other countries that were merely names on a map to her. She did spend a bit of her money buying books and maps of as much of the world as she could, including many volumes on the history of the world, making sure she bought the best ones available. She read most of them first, but the books and maps served another purpose.

They would help Moonshadow convince her kin that they might want to take precautions about coming out of the valley. The more Moonshadow learned about the outside, the more she thought the Kal'Droth should stay where they were. They had fights in the valley, and anger, and some thievery, but they didn't have murders, or wars or any one of a dozen other things that were purely evil in Moonshadow's opinion.

Coming out of the valley meant exposure to all of those things, and to races who went to war over words, and sometimes, less than that served as the excuse for wars. Moonshadow knew that she and her people were innocent, and she didn't think that was a bad thing, but it wasn't a good thing in dealing with other races either. They needed to know at least a bit about the other races and cultures that spread across the world, and from what she'd been learning, it would not be a bad thing to learn quite a lot about these humans.

Humans, according to everything she read and the people she'd talked to, were endlessly capable of being anything, and they were changing the face of the planet slowly but surely. They could be friendly one day and your worst enemy the next day, a fact that did not make any of the elven kind happy, not with the numbers of them that were growing across the planet. Moonshadow was very interested in meeting a few humans so she could form her own opinion of them.

The rainy season turned into winter and Moonshadow took advantage of a warm week to fly south, a departure that led to Qillathe making a few jokes about birds migrating south. Moonshadow spent the winter below the equator, and returned to the northern countries in the spring.

She saw Silverymoon and Waterdeep, flew past the Ten Towns and nearly died at the claws of a dragon in the Forest of Wyrms. During her travels, she met dozens of Humans and Elves, Dwarves and Halflings and other races stranger still.

She even had a tense conversation late one night with a drow, who thought she was one of his kind, until he saw her wings. By then, Moonshadow had her weapons ready, and it was the work of a few minutes to tie the drow up.

Moonshadow was very skilled with the four weapons common to her people, and at least familiar with a few others. The Kal'Droth used whips and lassos from the air, tangling and tying prey from a diving run. On the ground, they used the favoured weapon of their goddess, Eilistraee, the bastard sword. They also learned to use a small crossbow of unusual design. It was covered, and required that the bolt be placed in the small hole in the front of the weapon and pushed back until it caught. They used this weapon for ranged attacks on fast prey. It had one large advantage over a regular crossbow. The bolt would not fall out even during the wildest flight.

Moonshadow released the drow at the end of their talk, only to have him attack her with a hidden dagger as soon as she turned her back on him. She had heard enough about the drow that he did not catch her by surprise, but she was unable to lift off, and was forced to kill the drow to save her own life.

Moonshadow returned to the valley one year to the day, from the time she left and went to the council about her travels. She showed them the books and the maps, telling them about her travels, what she'd seen and experienced. She told them what had seen herself, and the things that were hearsay, and that she had not seen, so they would know that she was not exaggerating the situation.

The council listened to her, and read the books. They brought her back every day for a week, asking her to clarify this or that point, until they had drained her of everything that she remembered about the outside. They debated the information for two weeks after that, but could not come to a decision, until it was clear that they could not reach a decision about this.

For the first time in the valley's history, the council called for an open meeting. Every person that was not needed to be somewhere, doing something was gathered together and the information that Moonshadow had brought back was shown to them all. It took nearly six months for everyone to stop asking questions and then the valley voted.

It was decided that the Kal'Droth were too few to risk a war, or even allowing someone to find their valley home. They also listened to Moonshadow telling them about the hatred of any elf with dark skin, and they decided that they would expand around the valley, but not into the lands where the other races lived yet.

First, they had to find a way to keep their people from being attacked just because they had dark skin. They also had to find a way to be able to defend the valley, in case of an attack. The winds and terrain would be their best allies in that, but Moonshadow had brought back spells to create things called portals, which would allow someone to built a hole in space and put people right inside the valley. She'd also found a gate spell, that would open a gate in the air and allow people in the valley. Add the teleportation spells that the Kal'Droth already knew about, and that made for a lot of ways for a person who had been to the valley to come back.

The Kal'Droth were not willing to risk their lives to expand. Their numbers were far too few to risk losing anyone that that could save. The subject was debated for another two years, among small groups, at work sites, anywhere two or more Kal'Droth gathered.

Finally, a majority approved a plan of action. They would send a few of the best of the fledglings out each year to explore the world. They would be sent out to learn things, but more important, they would allow the world to find out about Kal'Droth slowly, and let them know that the winged ones were not drow, or friends of the drow.

These travellers would be good people, trained as well as the best teachers in the valley could train them, and sent out with specific goals in mind. Some would concentrate on magical learnings, while others would learn about cultures and countries, insuring that they had at least an idea about what most people would do. After the decision was reached, it took nearly ten years to implement it, and no one was really surprised that Moonshadow was already gone again before the first traveller went out.

What did surprise them, was her returning and giving them a crash course in money as used in the outside world., and making sure that each traveller had some funds to start with that did not point to them being from some place far away. Once she did that, she disappeared again, and she was not heard of again until two centuries later.

_The bard looked at her audience, almost half of which looked to be scribbling notes on various bits of parchment and paper. "The sun is rising, folks, and that means it is time for night owls such as myself to hunt our beds, that we can come out again tonight."_

_One of the people in the audience looked at her. "When you come back tonight, will you speak of the twin Kal'Droth?"_

_Someone else disagreed. "I would hear more of this Moonshadow. I have heard rumours that say she still lives, and learns new things, that her thirst for knowledge matches that of Tammar himself."_

_Someone else said, "I would hear the tale of how Songlight became the only mage in a human city. That would be a tale."_

_The bard raised her hands. "I will tell a tale, or possibly two, but we can discuss which ones I will tell tomorrow." She smiled, taking the sting out of her words. "Especially since some of you have short attention spans and might change your mind before I return tonight."_

_She stood and headed for the door, flicking a glance at the woman that had scribed her tale. The woman saw her looking and smiled, giving her a good signal, meaning that the scribing had gone perfectly this time. Windsong walked out and launched herself into the air, stretching and exercising wings that did not get enough of either with her spending night after night in the tavern trying to tell the history of the Kal'Droth in tales that did not truly convey the fears of the early Kal'Droth, or the loneliness of those few brave enough to leave the valley, knowing that they might not see another of their kind for decades at a time._

_There were many tales of those travellers that returned, but sadder still were the names that had left the valley, only to be lost, never to be heard of again. Windsong shivered as she remembered the names of those that had died or disappeared forever, engraved on the rock walls of the valley, so that everyone would remember the names of those that paid the ultimate price for their people._

_Few stories remained to mark the histories of those people, and fewer still were the known endings of those people._ _She pushed the thought of the lost ones away as she landed on the roof of the tavern and sat down to watch the sunrise. She saw the moon, nearly full, and reminding her that in a few more days she would have to take a night off from telling tales to follow the worship of Eilistraee, or miss yet another full moon. _

_She tried not to do that too often, but sometimes her calling caused her to miss a Hunt, and she had already missed two this year. She was not willing to miss another, especially since she had welcome prey this time._

_One of the travellers staying in the tavern had mentioned that a group of Chult slavers had been seen nearby, and Windsong fully intended to make sure that they remembered not to hunt Kal'Droth, or take them as slaves. _

_Windsong had known the young Winglight, before he was stolen from the valley, and she'd seen him when he was still Winglight, and living in Cormyr._

_Since she'd heard about what he went though, she'd spent the odd week hunting slavers, always leaving one alive to return and tell his people that hunting Kal'Droth had a high cost. Windsong knew of four Kal'Droth that had been abused by the slavers, and she was sworn to avenge them, at forty dead slavers for each of them._

_So far she'd killed eighty-three of the one hundred and sixty that she'd promised to kill, and it had been nearly two months since she'd gotten one. _

_It was time to change that._


	5. Wandering Wings

_**Wandering Wings; Shadowwalker and Nightwalker**_

_**The tavern, five nights later.**_

_Windsong stepped into the tavern and looked around as she headed for the seat reserved for her near the fire. Not too near to be sure, since feathers and fire didn't mix, but close enough that she didn't feel the early morning chill as the days cooled off, and fall turned to winter._

_She sat down carefully, easing one leg in front of her, and the regulars looked at her. One of the Questers that had stayed to hear more tales after the gathering was over looked at the bandage on her leg. "You appear to be hurt, Windsong. Is there a tale behind that injury?"_

_Windsong shrugged, "a minor one, of no real interest, save to me and my leg."_

_The quester smiled. "Really?" she said, her smile turning to a smirk. "So you would know nothing about a group of slavers, that someone killed on the night of the full moon?"_

_Windsong matched her smirk. "Of course I heard about that, I am a bard, and make a living by knowing things. I heard about it in the street this morning."_

_The quester nodded. "So, how did you injure yourself? I have yet to see you walk far enough to have tripped, and having seen you flying, I seriously doubt that you misjudged a landing that badly."_

_Windsong shrugged, searching for an answer that wasn't a lie, without telling anyone exactly how she'd been wounded. "I was out flying and had a disagreement with a lower animal. I won, but it hurt me before it died."_

_The quester sat next to Windsong and they chatted about this and that while Windsong ate before starting her work. The quester looked around, making sure that no one could see them right that instant. She pulled out a feather and handed it to Windsong. "The local magistrate says that no one around here is going to cry about a few slavers, but that if too much evidence shows up, he will have to do something." _

_She smiled as the black feather disappeared into Windsong's clothes somewhere. "If you have a few minutes some night, I'd like to know how one person takes down an entire caravan of slavers, while getting only that minor injury."_

_Windsong tuned her lute while the bar maid brought her a pitcher of water and a bottle of wine. "There are some debts that must be paid, at any cost. Have you heard the story of Shadowstalker?" _

_At the other woman's nod Windsong met her eyes and stared at her. "I will make sure that they consider Kal'Droth the most expensive slaves ever, in sheer numbers of dead, if in no other way."_

_The quester smiled. "Good luck with your mission." She stood up and went back into the crowd. Windsong looked out at the crowd and smiled. It was nearly as full as it had been during the gathering of questers. _

_It was mostly townsfolk now though, and since these were exactly the kind of people that she wanted to get the tales of her people out to, she was happy to see them._ "_What shall it be tonight, good folk?" she asked cheerfully, "Song or tales?"_

_A man she recognized as the town's only Wainwright coughed. "Your voice is quite beautiful, lass, but it's the tales of far away places and exotic people that bring us here every night." The man appeared to consider something. "Now, on a fest night, that might change, but for now, I have heard you mention the twins a dozen times, and I would hear their tale."_

_Windsong looked around and saw very few people that disagreed. She grinned and thought about the twins._ "_Most of you have seen twins before, and you know that they are closer than children that are siblings, but not born at the same time. These two were so close it was uncanny. That they could finish each other's sentences was a given, and as they proved in their childhood, they always knew how far away and what direction the other one was. If you set the two of them to doing something, even if they couldn't see each other, they would end up doing the chore in perfect synchronization, as if a single brain controlled the two bodies."_

_She grinned at a thought. "They both had one other thing that nearly led to them being strangled many times as they grew older. They had an incurable urge to see what lay over the next hill, and if it was another hill, they had to go look over it as well." Windsong laughed softly at another thought. "The guards around the border of our land are called the WindRangers, and they had to chase down the twins so many times during their early years that they were threatening to pluck their primary feathers until they were of age." _

_She looked out at the crowd, and flexed one wing. "For those of you that don't know, these are the primary feathers in a Kal'Droth wings, and without them, no avian can fly until they come back in, which may take as long as a year."_

_**Twin Trouble**_

Shadowwalker and Nightwalker were flying the nice sedate patterns that the Fledgling Instructor had assigned the class, and they were bored silly. They hadn't been flying any longer than the rest of the class, but they had flown further than some adults in a single day, following their urge to see what was over the next hill. The two of them had done roughly twice as much flying as anyone else in their group, in the same amount of time, which made the wing strengthening exercises they were doing today a waste of time and quite boring.

The Instructor watched them and saw the boredom. He knew exactly why it was boring to them, after all, everyone knew that these twins had managed to somehow cross the Shearwinds, the band of unpredictable, harsh winds that kept most creatures out of the valley home. They had not only crossed them, but gotten more than a week away, just exploring the countryside before the WindRangers caught them. That was the furthest they had ever gotten on one of their little trips, but they had crossed the Shearwinds so many times that people began to wonder if the winds were dying down.

The WindRangers were quick to disabuse them of that notion. One of the WindRangers finally caught them crossing the Shearwinds, and she had a theory about how they did it so easily. She was certain that they could see the things the other twin did, and that they used that to have nearly 360 degree wind pattern sight as they crossed. With the wide peripheral vision of the Kal'Droth and the close mental link of the twins, as long as they were looking in two different directions, they could see everything around them and react accordingly. That gave them a great advantage over any single person trying to cross the Shearwinds.

By the time the twins had turned sixty, and started the Fledgling training, they had explored the entire valley, and knew more about the unused portions of the valley than anyone but the druids and the WindRangers, and they'd already been out of the valley three times. As they learned more about flying and how to survive in the wilderness, their trips grew longer and finally, the WindRangers came to them and made a deal with the twins.

If the twins would tell them which way they were going and how long they were planning on being gone, the WindRangers would quit chasing them down and bringing them back. The twins readily agreed to this, and often disappeared for a week or two at a time. They couldn't be gone longer than that if they were going to be back for the Fledgling classes, and the twins were determined to be Travellers.

They wanted to see all the places that were mentioned in the tales of earlier travellers and in the tales of the only traveller not to be an actual traveller, Moonshadow. The twins had seen Moonshadow on her last visit to the valley, in the twin's fortieth year, and they had snuck out to listen to her talk in the festhall that night.

Her tales had sparked the wanderlust that they felt, and that was the start of their wanderings. Tales of strange races, stranger customs and far away places captivated the twins.

Stories of the Great Desert, fiercely guarded by the Dechdarrii nomads, who let no one cross their lands, ever. A song about Icewind Dale, where only the brave and hardy survived and a dozen more tales that night fired their imagination, and ever afterwards, the valley was no longer enough for them.

By the time they were old enough to be chosen for Travellers, their acceptance was a forgone conclusion. They had systematically set out to make sure that they were perfect for the openings, and they did it with the same obsessiveness that they wandered. In their one hundred and twenty-fifth year, the twins flew away from the valley for the last time.

_Windsong grinned at the thought of the twins. "It has been seven hundred and sixty-eight years since they left the valley, and they have never returned. When they meet another of our kind, they give them all their notes and the journals they keep of their travels, but they have told others that they will return only after they know the outside as well as they do the valley."_

The twins flew away from the valley, checking the landmarks they already knew for four days flight from the valley. It took them less than four days to come to the furthest point they had ever reached in their trips out of the valley and they stopped for the night.

Anybody seeing their camp that night would swear the two who sat there were mute, for they never made a sound that anyone could hear. A telepath or other psionic being that wandered by though, would be able to tell that quite a lot was being said, over the mental link that the twins shared with each other. At that time, the valley had never had any psionic people, it not being a common thing to any race that had ever lived there. The twins were the first of the psionic people to come out of the valley, but they would not be the last.

Shadowwalker was barely two centimetres shorter than her brother, with the same stocky built. For elven kin, they had wide shoulders, with an astonishing amount of muscle on both of them. This was due to their near constant flying since they were old enough to fly. The twins had more flight time than many people twice or even three times their age, which had developed their wings and the muscle structure that supported them to an astonishing degree.

Other than the height difference, the twins were almost exactly the same, with the white hair and dark skin of all their race, but they were a rare set, having the white wings that came around maybe once in a thousand births, and they were the first twins to have them in all the history of the valley. Other than the wings, they were normal Kal'Droth, with the same beauty and grace that marked every Kal'Droth.

The only other thing that made them stand out from any other Kal'Droth was barely known to anybody except their instructors and family. In a race that commonly had beautiful voices and perfect pitch, the twins had extraordinary voices, as far above the norm for their race as the average Kal'Droth was above an orc.

The bard Starsong, who had trained them in the bardic traditions had been heard to say that they could easily sing in any celestial choir that he'd ever heard of, and freely admitted that they could make him weep with ease.

"_So, brother, tomorrow we move into lands we don't know, except as tales. Do we explore them now, or do we go and find a land we've never heard of first?"_

"_I think we should find this place called Kalamar. The tales of the Basiran Dancers are quite intriguing, and none of our kind have been there yet."_

Shadowwalker looked at Nightwalker and smiled. _"A whole continent to explore? I can go for that."_

Her brother merely smiled and dug out their maps of the known world. As they looked at the maps, they thought about the nature of Grame Manifesto.

In every plane of existence, there were higher being, commonly called God, the Gods, Goddesses, or whatever description fitted them best. In their plane, these beings had ultimate power.

In other planes, their power was less than the beings native to that plane. Since none of these beings was willing to be less than any other, but they still had to meet occasionally, to iron out differences, or to fix problems that were caused by planar travellers, they all got together and created Grame Manifesto.

It was a single planet orbiting a single sun, but that was not what you saw from the surface of the planet, depending on where you were.

On the continent of Krynn, three moons that governed their magic orbited the planet.

In the world of Dark Sun, the sun was far larger and red in colour.

From one continent, you could find another planet, where Starjammers and Planescape folk lived, their technology unaffected by the magic that permeated the planet's surface.

On one continent, the Higher Beings had died in a God war, and their power was a property of the Birthright.

No one person could say how many continents there were, but every Higher Being had a piece of their plane on the planet, with their rules reigning supreme there.

There was supposedly a continent that no mortal could find, where the Higher Beings met to talk, and all were equal in power, so that no one Being had advantage over any other. Rumour of the various continents were carefully collected by bards, and sent to other bards freely, as they attempted to discover all the continents and where they were in relation to the others.

Rumour had come to the valley, borne by the records of a traveller, that spoke of the continent of Kalamar, where they had bards of many types, including bards that specialized in dance, or comedy, and the twins, who found the limits of song far too low for their talents, thought that Kalamar sounded like the perfect place to stretch their bardic talent.

The next day found them winging across the landscape, intent on their destination, Waterdeep. They were going to Waterdeep because it had one thing no other city on Faerun had.

It had Merrill's Shop.

Merrill was a human, a retired adventurer that had long ago lost his entire party to a coven of vampires, simply because they couldn't find the right supplies to kill them with. Merrill had been the sole survivor of that adventure, and he'd never forgotten it. He had survived only by dumb luck and the hand of a higher being.

Merrill had climbed inside his magic bag and punctured it with his dagger.

As any seasoned adventurer can tell you, when you puncture a magic bag that is basically a pocket plane of its own, you get a really large explosion, and Merrill knew that. He was the last one alive at that point, and he was simply trying to take the vampires that were closing in on him to the afterlife with him.

What fewer people know, and what Merrill had not known, is that there is a slim chance that the things in the bag will be randomly ejected onto another plane of existence, and that is what happened to Merrill that day. Surviving that experience made quite the impression on Merrill, and he swore that he would find a way to prevent that same fate befalling another party of adventurers.

Thus was born Merrill's, a shop catering to adventurers and other explorers. Merrill bought anything they brought in, and sold it to them at one standard price.

The first Merrill's in Faerun had just opened in Waterdeep, but in other places, Merrill had a store in every single town of ten thousand people or more, and it was his stated goal to have a shop in every town that size on the face of the world, and anywhere else he could go.

Sharpened ash stakes were free whenever you bought Holy symbols, water or anything to kill vampires with.

The reason the twins were heading for Merrill's this morning was the not so secret secret to his success. Merrill's stores were all linked, by a series of permanent portals.

If it was for sale in any Merrill's, anywhere in the world, you could buy it and it would be there in twenty four hours or less, depending on how many portals the object had to travel. If you had the money, you could use those same portals as gates, travelling in hours what would normally take months or even years to accomplish, but only if you had the money.

Each portal you stepped through cost one hundred and fifty gold, per person. To travel across a continent usually took four portals, costing six hundred gold per person.

The twins did not have the funds to travel that way, but they had something almost as good, or so they hoped. They reached Waterdeep just over two weeks later and landed before the gates, walking in like all the other beings entering the gates these days.

The guards stopped them briefly, not to harass them, since the infamous Nightshade lived just outside Waterdeep in the Aerie, but because they had to ask about the wing colour. They had not seen a Kal'Droth with white wings before, and they had to check that the twins were not shapeshifters or other trouble makers. When they had satisfied themselves on that score, the twins entered the biggest city they'd ever seen.

Like Nightshade before them, they were stunned at the sheer size of the city, and the number of beings that inhabited it. They were walking down the street when a familiar sound found their ears and they looked up.

Another Kal'Droth was just dropping to the ground with a smile. "Good morning, cousins. It's a beautiful day, and I have stories to share. Would you care to join me for breakfast, or an early lunch, if you have already eaten.?"

The twins looked at the Kal'Droth in front of them, and knew her. Nightshade Astarri was the most famous Kal'Droth ever, and close to being the most famous adventurer ever, period. Only one other being, Roland of the Golden Hammer was near her fame, simply because nobody else made a highly successful living robbing dragons.

Not killing them, robbing them. If she had to kill one or two in the course of robbing them, the Winged Hammer would do so, but Nightshade would count that mission only a partial success, as the idea was to rob the dragon. "After all," she said quite often, "any fool can hit a dragon until it dies, but few people have the ... courage to steal its hoard and let it live to gather more to be stolen again later."

The twins agreed, and Nightshade led them to an Inn that served winged beings regularly, from the furnishings that were custom fitted to beings with wings. She asked them their names and asked after the valley.

They exchanged news and talked for a bit about the valley, which Nightshade was planning on visiting soon, if the council would approve Roland coming along.

The twins blinked at that. In all the years since the Avariel had found the valley, no outsider had ever set foot in the valley. What Nightshade was asking would set the valley on its ear, even if the council refused the request. Nightshade asked where they were bound and the twins told her.

Nightshade raised an eyebrow to hear that they planned on going to a whole new continent. She thought about it for a few minutes and then looked at the twins. "Do you have to leave today, or can you put it off a couple of days?"

The twins shrugged. "We have no time limits," Shadowwalker said.

"Although we would like to know what you would have us wait for," added Nightwalker, as if continuing his sister's sentence.

Nightshade smiled. "I lead an interesting life, and it has taught me to take certain precautions against dying too early. I would offer you a few things to guard you as you travel to places where we don't have reputations or names yet."

The twins agreed readily, as help from anyone that had lived the kind of life Nightshade did, and lasted more than four hundred years so far was not to be scorned.

The trio flew to the Aerie, and the twins were awed by the sheer work that had gone into the Aerie over the last two hundred and fifty years. When Nightshade and Roland had started building their home here, it had been a normal mountain.

Two and a half centuries later, the outside of the Aerie was a perfectly round cylinder, with a glass like surface and a permanent greasy coat on it. There was a single entrance at the bottom of the cylinder, big enough for two wagons to enter abreast. That door was shut fast with what appeared to be a simple door of wood.

From the tales of those few that had tried to break in to the Aerie and survived long enough to talk about it, that door was not wood. Roland and or Nightshade were the only two that knew what it was, but it broke steel thieving tools with ease, and resisted all magic nearly as easily.

The top of the cylinder was flat, and covered with a small grove with a meadow and a small pond in the centre, where Nightshade performed her worship.

Rumour had it that to set foot on the top of the mountain without Nightshade's permission would cause a terrible curse to strike anyone foolish enough to invade her place.

They entered the Aerie through the ground entrance, and the twins grinned at each other behind Nightshade's back. There had to be another entrance further up, because Nightshade was not the type of person to walk anywhere that she could fly. They were wondering where it was exactly, when Nightshade looked over her shoulder.

Smiling impishly at them, she said, "the upper entrance is in the top, near the grove, and we didn't come though it because you can only come in through that entrance if you exited the Aerie from it. Otherwise you set off the defences, and I didn't think you two wanted to die today."

The twins blinked, wondering how she'd known exactly what they were thinking and she smirked at them. "Easy, it's the same thing all the Kal'Droth that have come in here have thought when we walked in the ground entrance." She continued on as they thought about that, willing to believe it, until Nightshade grinned at them again. "Or, I could be a mind reader."

Before they could respond to that comment, they passed out of the tunnel that led through the side of the mountain and entered the Aerie. They stopped, awestruck at the sheer work that had gone into the inside. Shaping and polishing the outside of the mountain was one thing, but hollowing out the inside of the mountain was a lifetime of work, but that was exactly what Nightshade and Roland had done.

The Aerie was an area one hundred and fifty metres across, and nearly four hundred metres high, Most of it was open enough that even a Kal'Droth would not feel claustrophobic, and would have plenty of room to fly.

On the walls, rooms were built out from the walls, with no way to get to any of them save only by flying. Nightshade pointed out the library, her pride and joy, four stories high, and it was obvious that it had been added on to, and was being expanded again even now.

A Mage of some kind was hovering outside of it, and waving a wand at it as he cast a spell. What spell, they couldn't tell from here, but they watched as another floor grew out from the wall and slowly expanded to match the shape and size of the floor above it.

Another being hovered nearby, playing a lyre, and the twins could feel the magic pouring out of the lyre. As the floor matched the one above it, a wall started growing out of it, and quickly met the floor above it, making a complete new room. The two people hovering there built a doorway and disappeared inside.

Nightshade sighed happily and pointed out the two Mage's workshops, the alchemist's lab, the armoury, and the quarters for the lesser known members of the Winged Hammer adventuring group. At the very top of the Aerie were Nightshade's rooms, far above the floor.

She turned, and pointed to the huge door, easily large enough for a great Wyrm to pass through, that marked the quarters of Roland. Behind that solid mithral door lay his forge and quarters and the group's treasury. The door was easily the single most expensive thing in the entire Aerie, eclipsed only by the value of the library.

Nightshade grinned happily at the doors. "Roland loves those doors, we took them from the lair of the first dracolich we slew.

Nightshade took off, leading the twins to a room built for visiting Kal'Droth and landed in it. "I am sorry that the quarters do not allow much privacy from each other, but I never expected to have any but single Kal'Droth, or maybe a mated couple here."

Nightshade chewed her lip for a second. "I must remember to make another set of quarters for situations like this again."

Shadowwalker smiled. "It is not a big deal, Nightshade. Nightwalker and I have been together our entire lives, and we have no secrets from each other. It's impossible to bathe while travelling in the wilderness without the other person seeing you."

Nightshade winced. "Don't remind me," she said shuddering dramatically, "my travelling companion is a dwarf."

That comment led the twins to thinking about seeing a nude dwarf come up out of the river and they shuddered with Nightshade, who was smiling.

Shadowwalker was about to say something when a voice from behind them made them spin around.

"What do ye think ye're doin, lass? Is ye insulting the beauty of the Dwarven race?"

The twins spun around, to see the biggest dwarf they'd ever heard of standing in the doorway behind them. Roland of the Golden Hammer was nearly five foot tall, and he was easily that big around, but little if any of that was fat. He was one of the fairer Dwarves, having red hair and a thick red beard that nearly reached his feet.

In his hand was a Hammer, the very hammer that gave him his name. It was easily a meter and a half across the face, and made of the alchemically treated heavy metal that was his speciality.

Nightwalker looked at him, taking in the muscles and size of the blacksmith fighter, and made a mental note never to be on the receiving end of that hammer's swing.

Nightshade smiled at her friend of more than three hundred years. "Not at all, Roland," she said, waiting a second, until he was relaxing, and then saying, "I'm insulting your beauty."

Roland was nodding, "That's what, Hey!" He glared at Nightshade as the twins watched the famous pair bicker about beauty.

They left the twins in the guest quarters and flew down to the floor, still arguing and the twins looked at each other. "_Maybe the ones that say these two are insane are closer to the truth than we thought."_

Nightwalker was watching them float down to the ground. _"Possibly, sister, but I don't think so. I think they hide a great deal of love and affection for each other under the bickering."_ He looked at his sister. _"We have had our arguments, and you remember them. Would we last three hundred years, if we argued like those two supposedly do all the time?"_

Shadowwalker considered that idea. _"Why would they hide it, if they have these feelings?"_

Nightwalker grinned at her. _"Can you imagine saying I love you to a dwarf? Or a dwarf saying it to you, even if he meant in the way we love each other? Dwarves simply don't do that, and Nightshade seems to be smart enough to know that, so they bicker, using that to tell each other the things they will never say aloud."_

Shadowwalker stood in the doorway, watching the two on the ground far below. _"How do you know so much about this, brother? How can you read a heart so easily, when it is all confusion to me?"_

"_The same way you can understand the most twisted political thinking. You're the logical one of our pair, and I am the emotional one. You know their minds and I know their hearts and between the two of us, there is nothing we can't do."_

Shadowwalker turned, smiling at her brother. _"Too bad the only thing we want to do is see what's over the next hill, isn't it? We could end up ruling a small country if we wanted."_

Nightwalker shuddered dramatically. "Are you crazy? Rulers can't follow the birds, or simply decide to fly thataway for the sheer hell of it. Why would anyone want to rule?"

They grinned and set to cleaning the travel grime of a week away. The odd dip in a river just didn't get the feathers as clean as they should be, and it was clearly noticeable on any Kal'Droth, as brown dirt shows up equally well on black or white wings.

Nightwalker stood behind Shadowwalker as she sat on one of the backless chairs designed for winged creatures that happened to stand upright and began to carefully groom the dirt from his sister.

She sighed, and gave herself up to the joy of clean wings. It was, after all, damn near impossible to reach the base of the wing to clean it properly yourself, and having a trusted friend to do it for you was one of the simple pleasures that made having a twin the greatest thing in the world.

When he was done, she returned the favour for him, and grinned as he fell asleep under her hands. He always did that. She had considered playing a trick on him when he did that, but she decided against it, since it showed such a high trust in her.

The next day, Nightshade took them into her workshop and the twins were careful to stand well away from everything. Nightshade was well known as the Dragon Thief, but she was nearly as well known for the jokes she played on people, and the twins were not sure which of the things in her lab were for robbing dragons and which would cause them to do or be strange things.

Nightshade went to a cabinet against the outer wall of the Aerie and opened it. The twins stared, their mouths dropping open. The cabinet was filled with beautiful jewellery, rings, necklaces, tiaras and more. Armbands and bracers, all of it was obviously of the highest quality. Nightshade looked at the twins and began rummaging through the things in the cabinet with a complete lack of regard for their value.

"When you try to enchant anything, it has to be of the highest quality to start with. A master-work item is needed. It would be best if you made your own items, but I'm not very good at metalworking, Roland is the metal master here. I do good wood carvings, and I can do good gem cutting, but combining it with metal would be a disaster, so I keep a few pieces to enchant when we hit another dragon."

She suddenly smiled and brought out two rings. "I knew I had the right things for you two in here somewhere." She showed the twins the rings. Deceptively simple looking jade rings, you had to look very closely to see the exquisitely done carving around the band, small birds flying end to end, in two rows all the way around both bands.

Nightshade let them look at them for a few minutes and then placed them in the centre of the table and reached for a large tome. "I'm not sure what the limits of a ring are, but we're probably going to push them a bit here." She read swiftly for a few minutes and then looked up with a smile. "There are some few rings that have more powerful spells than I am going to use on them, and a couple that have more spells than I am going to use, so we should be good."

Nightshade began working and the twins watched as all trace of the happy-go-lucky free spirit disappeared, leaving a woman focused on what she was doing, and ignoring everything else. She worked for nearly an hour and then stopped, rolling her head around and flexing her wings. She turned to the twins and smiled. "This is going to take about a week, and all I need you for is the last day, when I attune the rings to you, so that no one else can use them. Why don't you look around, read in the library, or visit Waterdeep? I'm very much aware that I am not good company when I am working, and Roland won't even come in here while I work. So if you'd like to do something else, go ahead."

She grinned at them, and they contrasted this woman with the one that had just been examining the rings so intently. Shadowwalker wondered if Nightshade had some way to shut down bits of her personality to achieve the amazing difference. The twins took their leave and went to the library only long enough to look for books or maps of Kalamar. They found very little, and only one map, so after they copied it, they got Roland to show them how to exit without getting blasted into a lot of tiny pieces, that not being one of their goals in life.

They wandered around Waterdeep for the next four days, looking at things they had only heard of, and having a good time. They ran across an impromptu contest between several minstrels, and joined in the fun.

They sang unaccompanied, having left their instruments back in the Aerie, and concentrating on getting every note and word perfect, so that these humans didn't think ill of their ability, they closed their eyes, listening only to the song and each other until the song was over.

They finished the song, and opened their eyes to see what the others had thought of their singing, only to find them standing there transfixed, staring at the twins. The twins stood in the centre of a pool of silence in the city that stretched for nearly two blocks in every direction.

One of the minstrels shook his head and looked at the twins. "I was next," he said quietly, "but I'll forgo my turn. I could not top that on my best day. I envy you."

The twins blushed, disclaiming any great skill. The minstrels snickered. "We know better than than, my friends. Nightshade has often sung the songs of how they robbed this dragon or that one, and she is a great song writer, but her voice doesn't come close to matching what I just heard, or she would never have time to rob dragons. Everybody in the city would pay hugely to have you two, or just one of you as the house bard, until the King heard you, and off you would go, to the palace."

They finally managed to escape after singing three more songs, and practically bringing that section of the city to a halt as everyone tried to hear them sing. They sang, watching the people stop and shush the people next to them, and as the pool of silence spread they began to understand that the singing that had been considered good in the valley, was considered to be something more to people that didn't have twenty-five thousand years of trained voices in their ancestry.

After that, they were far more careful about singing their best in front of humans and elves, both of whom tended to be overwhelmed easily by the voices of the twins.

At breakfast in the Aerie on the fifth day, Nightshade told them to stay in the Aerie today, as she would need them to attune the rings around noon. They spend the morning in the library, poring over maps of places they'd heard tales of, and places they'd never heard of and making notes for after they returned from Kalamar.

Nightshade asked them to step into the lab after lunch and they went with her, seeing the rings laid out on the same table that they had been on when they last saw them five days earlier. Nightshade handed them both a ring and asked them to prick their fingers and put two drops of blood on the rings.

As they did so, Nightshade cast a spell they didn't know over them and they rings. They blood and the rings both glowed, and burst into a cool blue flame that did not burn, which grew until they had to close their eyes. The light beating against their eyelids and Nightshade's chanting both stopped simultaneously, and they looked at the rings.

As far as they could tell, the rings were not even magical. Nightshade checked the rings with a powder that caused the rings to glow in a pattern of several colours and Nightshade smiled. "Some of my very best work," she said in a tone filled with satisfaction. "Just so you know what they do, I gave them a strong protection spell, which should help you when some one doesn't like you. They will also do two more things for you. They have a constant spell, that will detect hostile intent toward you within sixty feet and on the command word, or if you are ever one step from dying, they will bring you back here, from anywhere on this plane of existence."

She grinned at their looks. "They will both activate, if the teleport spell is needed, as I don't imagine the one that got left behind would be very happy with me for leaving you far away when your twin is in trouble." The twins sighed, having been thinking about that very thing, and examined the rings again.

Shadowwalker frowned as she tried to detect the magic on the rings. She looked at Nightshade in puzzlement when she could not find any traces of magic at all. Nightshade smiled again. "I cast another spell on the rings, one of the Nystul's group of spells. It prevents the magical aura of an item from being found, so that magical things can appear to be non-magical. The attunement insures that only you can use your ring, so that I don't have to worry about someone other than you two being teleported into my home, past all the defences and wards."

Nightshade smiled. "You will be able to pass those rings to your children as well, but Shadowwalker, your ring will only work for people that are descended from you, as Nightwalker's ring will only work for people in his line of descent." Nightshade looked at the rings again, smiling broadly. "As I said, some of my very best work. Try them on."

Nightwalker slipped his ring on and felt it change size slightly to fit him perfectly. The ring was slightly warm to the touch and felt smooth to the touch, even though he could see the carvings around the band. He asked Nightshade about that, and she shrugged. "I nearly got killed once, because a carved ring snagged on a pocket when I needed it badly, and since then I have developed a spell that make every ring smooth, no matter what it looks like. Those rings will never hang up on you, or get snagged on anything."

The three friends spent the rest of the day going through Nightshade's armoury and equipment, listening to Nightshade tell them what some of the things she had done, and taking a few things that they might be able to use.

Nightshade had a large collection of magic whips, and they both took a fifteen foot whip that could do damage even to creatures in armour or with thick hides. Nightshade took them to Merrill's the next day, chatting with them and offering last minute advice from her years of adventuring. They accepted most of it, and promised to let her know if they found any evil dragon lairs.

They did choose to ignore the advice on how to rob a dragon themselves, as they didn't think that was a viable option for a pair of bards without a huge dwarf to back them up.

At Merrill's Nightshade hugged them both and left them after the gold had been paid to the elf running the shop that day. She only stepped outside though, and waited for them to be taken in the back to the portals, awaiting their turn in the network. Nightshade stepped back inside and smiled at the elf. "Good morning again, Aramil. I need a favour."

The twins went through the portals, more than a dozen of them and finally, they were in the land of Kalamar. As they started to walk out of the store, the dwarf behind the counter stopped them. "Excuse me, but I have something for you, and a note."

Shadowwalker and Nightwalker looked at each other in puzzlement and walked back to the counter. The dwarf laid the nineteen hundred and fifty gold pieces they had paid for their trip on the counter. "I am requested to tell you that you were overcharged this amount and that you should take it back."

They looked at each other and Nightwalker sighed. He turned to the dwarf. "Might I guess that this message came from Waterdeep?" At the dwarf's nod he sighed. "Nightshade means well, but she does not need to pay for this trip. She has already done much for us and this is too much. Please send it back to her with our regards."

"I can't do that, lad. I have explicit instructions as to what to do with the money if you two refuse it. I am to find a fake bard, or the worst minstrel in the entire city, and give it to them, so that they can sing forever." He pushed the note at them. "You might want to read the note."

_Heya cousins,_

_I know this is a rotten trick to play on you when you can't do anything about it, but I saw how much you have left after paying for this trip, and it is far too little for two people in a foreign country that may not even accept you as people. Just take it, or it will go to the worse cause I could think of. I will make you this deal. _

_Take it with you, and if you have not needed it in one year, give it to anybody you please, after the year is up._ _Fair enough?_

_Nightshade Astarri_

The twins looked at each other and shrugged. They split the purse between them and stepped out into the Kalamar sun.

Two weeks later they were flying south, heading for the capital, to see the sights and look through the library when they saw two human females being accosted by a dozen bandits. The women were dressed in the robes of one of the schools of Basiran Dancers and they uncoiled their whips and flew toward the encounter. They had barely started toward the developing fight when the two dancers erupted into motion.

For the rest of their lives, they would remember what they saw, but be unable to adequately describe it in any detail. The two women, whom they were close enough to see were twins like themselves spun into a dance that included the twin scimitars they both wore. They danced, and the dance was death for the bandits, who had no chance as the women appeared to be everywhere at once, acting in perfect synchronization, as if a single brain controlled the both of them.

Before the flying twins could cover the distance that separated them, the twins on the ground had killed eleven of the bandits and were facing the last one, who had surrendered and was begging loudly for his life.

The two Kal'Droth landed and listened to him for a minute while they examined the other twins. Shara and Mara D'Angelo were annoyed with the bandits, but that was swept away when two things dropped out of the sky and watched them as curiously as they watched the two beings with wings. The male being looked at the bandit for a minute and then looked at them again. "Where we come from, bards have free rein, and attacking one is wrong. Is it so in this place as well?"

He spoke accented but understandable Kalamaran, and they looked at each other. "For those that are considered real bards, yes. However, Dancers are not considered real bards."

The two winged beings looked at each other, and Shara and Mara blinked. They had seen that look a dozen times a day.

_"Sister, they have a mental link, such as we have,"_ thought Shara.

"_I can see that, but I do not think they are Twin Dancers, sister. We would have heard of Dancers with wings."_

"_I agree, but I would love to know where they are from, it would be a fascinating place to visit."_ The two humans looked at the bandit and suddenly smirked. They looked at each other, and then Shara winked at the two winged beings.

Mara crossed to the bandit, who was staring at the dark skinned winged beings he had just discovered behind him when Nightwalker spoke. From his point of view, these things had just appeared out of thin air, and he was about to soil himself, wondering what they were planning on doing with him.

That was when Mara tapped him on the shoulder. "Listen to me, scum. These are the Celestial Guardians, protectors of Dancers, and you have offended them. You have a single chance to live. Run, find a hole and pull it in after you. They will wait one hour, and then they will hunt you for seven days. If you can avoid them for that time, you will live, do you understand?"

The bandit whimpered, his bowels voiding as he comprehended what she had said, and then he was running, not caring what direction he went, as long as it was away from these things and their guardians.

His only thought that didn't have to do with running was that anyone that could kill eleven armed men without a scratch didn't bloody need Celestial Guardians.

Mara watched him run with a smile, and turned back to the two beings, who were smiling at her. "That was mean, you know," said the female, trying to hide her smile.

Mara shrugged. "He lost all right to me being nice when he attacked us."

Shara, busily searching the dead men agreed. "No one raises a sword at my twin and gets nice from me."

Nightwalker grinned. "I like these two, sister."

Shadowwalker agreed silently and looked at the twin not pilfering from the dead men. "I am called Shadowwalker, and this is my brother Nightwalker."

Mara blinked, several times. "Walkers? You two walk places, with those beautiful wings on you?" She shook that off and introduced the two human women to the Kal'Droth. "I am Mara and that is Shara D'Angelo, Dancers from Basira."

Shara looked up long enough to nod at the two beings. She finished her looting and stood up, looking at the other twins. Both of them carried a bastard sword over their backs, angled down between their wings, and the coils of a lasso and a whip rode their belts.

"_That was the meeting of the twins with the humans that would change their lives. They followed them back to the Basiran Dancer school, and applied to become Dancers. They learned the dances, and then adapted them to their own unique style."_

_"Most dancers are bound the ground, battling gravity to jump a little higher, to reach further, but those limitations don't apply to people with wings, and in a few short years, by the lifespan of an elf, they had a new school of dance, open only to those who could fly in one fashion or another." _

_"Skydancers were mostly humans using magic to fly, as the next Kal'Droth would not be along to learn the art for three hundred years, but the art was too new, too popular with people who wanted to stretch the boundaries of Dance to not find students, even if they had to buy rings and cloaks that bestowed the ability to fly on the wearer."_

"_Once they had the art down, they applied to become Twin Dancers, an art taught only to twins, that capitalized on the mental links and matching abilities of twins. It took them a very short time to master that art, as few of the things taught there were new to the Kal'Droth twins, who had been talking in each other's heads since before they could vocalize the words."_

"_All in all, they spent nearly two hundred years there, learning and perfecting their skills, before the wanderlust struck too hard to be ignored."_ _Windsong stretched and took a sip of her wine. "I will not go into detail about those schooling years, because anyone that has trained to be a professional dancer knows what the training is like, and the rest of you would not believe me, when I detailed the routines that separate the true Dancer from the person with a bit of rhythm."_

_Another bard, sitting in the corner snorted his agreement, but remained silent other than that. Windsong nodded to him, and smiled as she turned back to the crowd._

"_It was not even when they returned to Faerun that they started having songs made about them, as they spent the first twenty years of their return with the nomads of the Shaar, learning two new dance styles, those of the Dervish, which is strictly a fighting dance, and the ways of the Tempest, which can be used to enhance a fighting dance, or to dance to the gods of the nomads._ _It was their assault at the hands of bigoted humans in Longsaddle that launched them into fame and history."_

_**Longsaddle, seven hundred years ago, during the Fall festival.**_

Nightwalker opened one eye as his sister landed in the tree he was sleeping in, and sat up when he saw her face. She was excited about something and he waited for her to tell him what it was. He could have read her mind of course, but that was not right, since she had the light shield up that kept her thoughts private.

When they were younger, sharing their thoughts was totally natural, and they never had shields against each other, but that had changed as they grew older. While neither of them had taken a lover yet, they both had different ideas about beauty in the sexual area, and they both found it a bit disturbing to hear the other sibling thinking thoughts like that about the people they liked.

That was not the only reason for the shields, because at they aged, they started to realize that everyone needs some privacy, no matter how close they are. It had taken them nearly a year to learn how to shield each other, far longer than it had taken them to learn to shield against the intrusions of psionic beings, since they were so close, and they rarely used their shields to this day.

Shadowwalker landed and smiled at Nightwalker. "I have a cure for the money problem. There is a dance contest in Longsaddle in three days time. First prize is twenty gold."

Nightwalker smiled. "Perfect. That will tide us over until we get back to the house and the treasury."

The two of them had bought a house near Nightshade's Aerie, and when they were away, which was most of the time, they paid one of the students in the Winged Hammer school to look after the place. This trip out had been a series of bad luck from beginning to end, and they were now flat broke with just a couple days of food left and not a coin between them.

This dance contest would allow them to get back to the house, nearly ten days flight away, without having to stop and do a job of some sort. They were running late because of the bad luck, and they had to be in Waterdeep in just twelve days to meet the adventuring group Beautiful Fury.

They were going to guide the group in their explorations of the Shaar, a place that the twins had lived in for twenty years. They spent the next three days preparing for the contest, hiding in the woods so that no one would see their dance steps.

They had been spied on before, and even attacked, when the dance prize was high enough.

It was not the prize that was the problem this time, but they were in the woods, unable to afford an inn, and they didn't know that the drow had been coming into Longsaddle for the last month, killing more than twenty residents, and carrying off at least a dozen children to a fate no one wanted to think about.

That in itself would not have been that big of a deal, since Drow didn't fly, normally. This band of the drow though, did have a flyer, a drow with a cloak of the Bat, a magical item that granted the ability to fly to the wearer. The flying drow had been seen twice, and the townspeople were very upset at this point.

The Lord of the region had help on the way, but it had not arrived yet and the town was slowly boiling over. That was the mood of the town the day the two Kal'Droth quite innocently dropped out of the sky and landed in the town's square just before dusk, when the dance contest was supposed to start.

There was an instant of silence, before an unknown person screamed and fired his bow at the two. He missed, but that was the signal for everyone with a weapon in reach to converge on the two startled twins.

Startled they might have been, but more than two hundred years of practice in the fighting dance came to the forefront, and they exploded into action, dropping the shields between them and meshing in the telepathic link that was the final sign of fully trained Twin Dancers.

They danced, and added the Dervish and Tempest styles to the Twin Dancer style, but the first time they tried to fly away, not understanding why they were being attacked, or why they should fight these crazy people, they found that some mage had cast a spell preventing flight.

With their option to flee taken from them, they fought for their lives, as the townspeople were not holding back.

They spun, whirled and glided, always within thirty feet of their sibling, and watching out for each other in ways no unlinked person will ever understand. They started out using the flat of their bastard swords, but soon it became obvious that they would not be able to do that and live, and with a deep sorrow, they began the killing dance.

The fall taxes had just been collected, and so the town knew just how many people lived in Longsaddle that day, when they attacked two strangers without giving them any chance what so ever. Longsaddle had two thousand and fifty-four people that morning. By the time the two dancers fought their way to the edge of town and could fly away, the town had lost one hundred and seventy-two of that number.

Nightwalker covered Shadowwalker as she got into the air, and then she swooped and dove, giving Nightwalker time to get airborne and away. The two of them flew away, landing in the forest some five miles away.

"What the hell was that about?" asked a bewildered Nightwalker.

"I don't know," his sister replied, "and it doesn't matter right now. Let me see that arm."

She cleaned and bandaged the wounds Nightwalker had suffered, more than a dozen cuts, two arrows in him and a few punctures, where someone got a little too close with a rapier or a dagger. When she was done, he started working on her injuries. She didn't have nearly as many, since she was not happy in melee combat and tried to avoid it as much as possible, only coming close when she had no choice. She had several arrow scrapes, where arrows had barely missed, leaving long cuts though, and three arrows in her.

They finished tending each other and were resting in the tree for the night when Nightwalker heard something. He blinked and looked up. From the ground, the being that flew over head might have been invisible, but from where Nightwalker was, he was plain to see.

Nightwalker saw the drow with the magic cloak, and the actions of the townspeople fell into place for him. He glared at the drow, and suddenly he knew that more drow would be coming.

He woke Shadowwalker silently, and relayed what he had seen and what he wanted to do. Shadowwalker was in agreement, and they used the potions they had been saving for a dire emergency to close their wounds.

They prepared, and soon, a band of twenty or so drow came though the woods, silent as death, and watching warily in all directions. Except one.

Most land bound people regularly forget to look up when they are looking for enemies, bound by the limits of their kind. The twins were counting on that, and as the drow passed near their tree, they dropped down, landing in the middle of them and starting their attacks even before they had hit the ground. An instant of frozen immobility among the drow allowed two more to die without ever knowing what happened, and then it was a silent fight, with neither side asking for or giving quarter.

Four of the twenty-three drow were down before they knew they were under attack, and the others tried to strike back, but here, unlike in the city, the Kal'Droth could use the full range of their capabilities, and they spun like Dervishes, raged in the manner of Tempests and flew up, only to flip over and dive on a drow, using the bastard swords two handed and cleaving the slender beings in half more often than not.

Five minutes after they started, they were just two drow left, and the four of them stopped for a second, with the drow facing the two Kal'Droth. Nightwalker looked at the two evil beings, feeling their evil on his skin, like a film of scum. "You should have stayed where Corellon Larethian exiled you. You are not wanted here, until you can live in peace with the surface people."

One of the drow glared at him. "We will live in peace with them, when they are slaves or dead," he hissed.

Nightwalker sighed. "That will not be soon, if you are the best your race can supply." Nightwalker and Shadowwalker sprang at the two drow, working as the team they were, and the drow split up, both of them hoping that the two winged beings would go after the other one.

They did, but even though the drow they didn't go after turned to run, the greater speed of their wings caught up to him in short order, and the last drow was dead. They stripped the drow of anything that they could use and beheaded all of them, settling down to wait for the flying drow to return.

She did, flying slowly, apparently looking for her missing party, and the two Kal'Droth sprang out of the trees, whips already reaching for her as they lifted off. Nightwalker's whip wrapped around her neck, and one powerful pull later, the dead woman settled to the ground, where Nightwalker and Shadowwalker wrapped all the heads and the flying Drow's body in the cloak of the Bat, and flew back toward the town.

As they got closer, Shadowwalker sang a bit of song, casting a bardic spell of invisibility. They flew slowly, weighted down by the cloak and its grisly contents. When they were over the square where they had landed earlier in this bloody day, they dropped the cloak, and flew away as fast as their tired wings could take them.

The Longsaddle guard was out in full force tonight, dreading the return of the winged beings that had devastated the town earlier. One of them was in the square with a crossbow, and he heard the thump of the cloak landing. Fearing the worst, he sounded the alarm and moved forward to investigate.

He found the pile of drow heads and the body, still in the cloak. Before he could examine the body, the rest of the guard and two mages were there.

The mages checked the bodies for magical traps and then examined the body and the heads. Pinned to the body was a note, written in the common tongue.

_To the people of Longsaddle,_

_Here are the drow that we caught sneaking around after you attacked us. We came in peace, only interested in attending the festival and joining the dance contest, and you assaulted us for no reason. We might have been lenient, had we been able to fly away from your unwarranted attack, but someone took that option away from us._

_We are sorry that the drow have apparently been raiding you and so when we found them, we stopped them, but we have no regrets about the people you forced us to kill._

_The next time a pair of Bards visit your town, you might want to be a bit more hospitable towards them._ _The cloak the body is wrapped in is what allowed her to fly, and you might get a mage to put a ward against magical flight up at night, stopping this type of thing in the future._

_You also might want to consider not attacking random strangers, simply because they are different from you._

_Shadowwalker & Nightwalker._

Dawn found the two tired Kal'Droth sleeping in a tree, and so did the noonday sun. It was not until nearly nightfall that Nightwalker stirred, and all he did was recast the alarm ward that would alert them if anyone came too close to them.

Once that was done, he went back to sleep, too tired from the fighting of the day before to notice the Drow woman watching them from a tree about twenty meters away. She smiled and rested her bastard sword across her thighs and waited patiently for the pair to wake up again.

_Windsong stood up and made sure she had room before opening her wings to their fullest, stretching the cramped muscles._ "_That they met a cleric of Eilistraee when they woke up is not in doubt. The twins however, have never told anyone what they did for the next week. They made their meeting with the adventuring group, and took them to the Shaar, but they made that meeting by stepping out of a gate, made in an instant, right in the room that the group was using in a tavern in Waterdeep._

_The two of them still had the weapons and armour of the drow they had killed, as well as a few magical trinkets that they took from the dead, and a quick stop at Merrill's soon outfitted them properly, without delaying the group much._ _While the two of them have not told anyone what they did during that week, it is commonly assumed that they met with Eilistraee herself, as both of them have demonstrated the abilities of Divine Disciples, and Shadowwalker has shown the abilities and skills of a Sword Dancer, while Nightwalker has shown the skills and abilities of a Divine Champion._

_That they are followers of Eilistraee is a given, as they have often celebrated the moon hunts with Nightshade when they are in Waterdeep, so if they do indeed have those abilities, one has to wonder why Eilistraee chose them to represent her to the world._ _Neither of them is a cleric, nor are they particularly articulate in converting people to her worship, preferring to worship quietly, without a lot of fanfare or show."_

_Windsong folded her wings down and sat back down, staring off into space. "Where the pair are at any given time has never really been known for the last four hundred years. Unless they show up at Nightshade's Aerie, they could be anywhere. One of the Travellers is a Horizon Walker, a person that can step from one plane of existence to another as easily as you and I step from building to building, and he met them on another plane of existence once, so far from here and so different that I cannot explain all the things he told me about the plane called "Discworld", not if I had twice the vocabulary and ten years to do it."_

"_It is one of those things you have to see to believe, and even then you may not understand it. I know that my friend the Horizon Walker refuses to go back there, just because he does not understand it even a little bit."_

_Windsong looked at the crowd fondly. She'd been here for nearly a month, and she knew a lot of these people by name. She would miss them, but it was time to move on. She could not fulfill her vow sitting here, and there were new songs to learn and tales to hear, out there, just over that horizon._

_She bade the customers good night and good bye, and walked toward the door, just as she had every night. _

_Conor was by the door and he looked at her. "My father was a farmer, and when I started getting the itch to go see what lay beyond the area I knew, he used to say, "You're hearing the geese call, aren't ye, lad?" and I had to say yes."_

_He looked at her. "I think you're hearing the geese call, aren't you?"_

_Windsong sighed, stepping outside and looking toward the sky. "I am. I want to go, and see if I can prove Moonshadow is still alive and doing things, I want to rob a dragon with Nightshade and kill evil doers with Shadowstalker. I want to travel to places no Kal'Droth has ever seen with the twins and dance for Eilistraee with them."_

_Conor sighed. "I'll miss you and your stories, lass. Know that where ever you go, there will always be room by my fire for you."_

_Windsong smiled at the elderly human and didn't mention that by the time she came back this way, he would not be alive, as his grandfather had died, and his father had grown old and died since her last visit here._ _She merely hugged him and kissed his cheek before taking a step away and springing into the air, where she was soon gone from sight._

_Conor sighed, watching her go and then looked around. "I can still feel you, so why don't you let me see you."_ _An image slowly appeared from the dark, a Kal'Droth, who stepped close and cocked an inquiring head toward the Tavern Keeper. Conor nodded. "If you want her to help you, make sure your current targets are slavers, she seems to have a hate for them."_

_Shadowstalker nodded and grinned slightly. Conor looked around and spoke a bit lower. "While you're waiting for a group of slavers, I thought you might like to know that Hassan Arif is going to be in Cormyr next month. He has recently purchased a large estate there, where he has no reputation, and is going to stay there until things cool down in his native Chult."_

"_Apparently, one too many children went missing in his area, and somebody finally proved that he was taking them for unnatural desires."_

_The Kal'Droth didn't say anything, but his eyes went flat and he nodded once._

_He disappeared into the night as silently as he'd come and Conor looked toward the sky one more time. He sighed, already phrasing his report to Tammar in his mind as he went back into the tavern._

_Sitting on the roof, the invisible woman grinned. She had been right, Shadowstalker was using informants to find the evil people he hunted. Good. _

_That gave her another way to make sure that evil did not spread faster than good. She disappeared from where she sat without moving and reappeared in a house in a decent but not too expensive quarter of Waterdeep._ _She had a house in nearly every city in the world and could teleport to any one of them easily._

_After all, seven thousand years of study gave one quite an education. With a smile, Moonshadow began revising her plans to maintain the balance._


	6. Nature's Fury

_Long ago and far away, ten wildly different people came together for one little adventure. Four hundred years later, the adventuring group they started is still going, and has become the single largest mercenary group in any plane of existence, encompassing the Library of Tammar, The Guild of the Winged Flame, the Inner Eye guild, and the Adventurer's Guild as well as the core group, the group of half breeds, misfits and freaks called Nature's Fury._

_Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it belongs to somebody else. If you don't, it's a player created thing used in the D&D/D20 game world of Grame Manifesto and everything is covered under the Open Gaming licence, we hope. If it isn't... I didn't do it._

_Started: 01NOV2007, 00:03:15, as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenge for 2007._

_**Legends of Grame Manifesto**_

_**Book Two**_

_**Nature's Fury**_

_**Chapter One**_

_**Surviving the Adventurer's Academy**_

Deirda Wingfoot stared at the scrying pool with a touch of interest. She'd been giving the initial briefing to potential students at the Academy for ten years and this was the most bizarre group she'd ever seen.

Oh, there were the typical farm kids, most of whom would quickly decide that a live of pain and scars was not for them and run on home to grow crops. A few more town types, who would be appalled by the thought of living in dirt, and just hunkering up under a bush in the woods during hard times.

Out of one hundred people that she gave the first talk to, half wouldn't stay past the chat she had with them. Of the ones that did enter the Academy, most would quit, be run off or die. The Academy had a reputation as the hardest school anywhere in the world, and it showed in the quality of the few that did graduate.

She looked again at the group of people waiting for her. Besides the normal humans, elves, dwarves and a scattering of other common races, were nearly a dozen people that defied instant classification. Two winged beings, one with feathers of blood red and the other with feathers that were black. No sables or midnight hues there, those feathers would never be described as anything but black. There was some sort of huge plant being and that one there had fur and wicked looking claws. There was a short woman, with the far too innocent air of someone that played a lot of jokes on other people, a man, maybe, who seemed to be blurred around the edges, as if he was a reflection in a poorly made mirror.

Those people stood together, ignoring the looks and whispers of the rest of the people in the hall. Apparently, they'd all come together. Deirda could understand that. Some races and people took the abnormal in stride, counting a being's deeds and manner more important than their looks or ancestry.

Some. Most people were stiff-necked bigots, who automatically assumed that if it didn't grow up in their village, hamlet, town or whatever, and it didn't look like they did, it was something to be destroyed or run off. She raised one crooked eyebrow as the huge being stood and his head brushed the ceiling. That ceiling was fifteen feet high. Judging by what she could see, the muscle packed on that frame would match and possibly exceed that impressive height. She was distracted from those thoughts as one of the winged beings stretched its wings. Beautiful black feathers there, on a wing span of ten to twelve feet. Her eyes narrowed. She'd heard about wings like that somewhere, but she couldn't place it right now. She stood up and ended the scrying with a word.

It was time for the show. She thought about it. "Thirty four average people and that group, forty four in all. That group will enter, and about nineteen of the others."

She went into the Entry Hall, where the students that decided to enter the Academy would be brought. She smiled at Roland One-eye, her friend and sometime lover. "Of the forty four, we'll get twenty nine of them." She thought about it. "I also think this class may have a higher success rate than normal."

Roland looked at her. "If you say so. You want your regular bets?"

Deirda nodded. "You might want to tell the supply people to send a mage over this time. We've got some Exotics in this group. Ten or more of them." She smirked. "Including at least two with wings."

Roland rolled his eyes. "Tisara's tits," he swore. "I'll be listening to them complain about the extra work for a week."

She patted his shoulder. "You shouldn't have accepted the job then, wouldn't you say?" Roland was the head of the Academy's basic phase, the four month course everyone took in the beginning of their schooling. It was designed to get rid of the ones that didn't have the drive or the ability to complete the harder courses of the school. It also insured that everyone spoke at least one language in common and knew the rules of the school. "I have to go give the briefing. I'll see you after you've tucked the kids away for the night."

_**OoOoOoO**_

Nightsinger looked around, examining the people and beings around her. Some of them she knew, having met them along the journey to the Academy but most were strangers to her. She looked for danger in them automatically. She was different, which made some people hate her instantly, and her ancestors didn't help a bit. That she was obviously of the Drow, a race hated by almost every surface race was bad enough, but that she had wings only made that hate worse, as most people saw her as a freak, an abomination. No one looked like they would be attacking her soon, so she relaxed and stretched her wings again.

She tucked them in tight as a flash of light announced the arrival of a new being. Nightsinger drew in a startled breath at the appearance of the woman on the small dais in the front of the room. She was human, or maybe half elven, but it was nearly impossible to tell for certain. Her head was a mass of scars, caused by some sort of intense heat. One eye was gone entirely and her ears were mere nubs on the side of her head. The vest that was all she wore on her torso did nothing to hide the continuing scarring or the missing arm. Here, the burn scars were joined by scars from swords and other edged weapons, and some of those scars were too neat and organized to be from battle. At some point in her life, the woman had been tortured.

The lower half of her body continued the tale of a life that had been harder than most people could imagine even in their nightmares. Her left leg was bent and twisted, with a huge chunk missing from her thigh where something had taken a large bite out of her. She wore a pair of shorts for modesty, but since the scars went down into the top of those shorts and came out the bottom, Nightsinger had no reason to believe they stopped anywhere on the woman's body. Overall, the woman was a figure to give children nightmares and make adults avert their eyes.

Deirda smirked crookedly at the gasps and mutters that accompanied her appearance. "Good morning. My name is Deirda Wingfoot and I will be giving you the introductory briefing to the Academy."

She surveyed the crowd. "Take a good look at me, people. If you come to the Academy and continue with the life of an adventurer, you might be one of the ones that ends up being able to give this briefing."

She smirked at the looks she got. "I know what you're thinking. 'That won't be me, I'm better than that', or something along those lines. I know because forty years ago, I stood where you are and had the same thoughts. I was wrong, and some of you are as well."

She eased herself to the edge of the dais and sat down. "Let me give you some facts. The Academy has been in operation for one hundred and ninety-seven years. We average just forty-seven graduates a year. That is nine thousand and sixty-two total graduates in nearly two hundred years."

She looked at them. "We only give this briefing to classes of forty or more. Of the people in this room, some of you will decide that the call of adventure or fame isn't worth it, and you'll go home. The rest of you, the ones that stay and begin the Academy, let's say, thirty of you, will be driven harder than you can believe now. We're going to drive you into the ground, pick you up, and drive you some more. Some of you won't be able to handle that, and you'll quit. Others will be let go, because the instructors don't think you have the skills, drive or brains to finish the school. By the time your first year is over, ten of that thirty will be gone, and then the hard part begins."

The people were watching her avidly and there were a lot of startled looks when she said that the hard part would begin only after the first year was up.

"For the first year, we'll be giving you classes, under controlled conditions. In your second year, a group of students and one instructor will begin doing field training and we all know that when you go into the wilderness, sometimes you don't come back."

She gestured at the wall and murmured an incantation. The illusion fell, showing a series of names. There were maybe six hundred names on the wall. "Before you decide to enter the Academy, take a look at that wall. Those are the people that died in training here, who left no mark on the world but that memorial. Others have completed the Academy only to end up looking like me, or dying young."

She looked at the group. "We believe in a hands on approach here at the school, and the only way to truly train a fighter, is to let him fight. A wizard has to cast spells and a bard has to perform in front of an audience. Sometimes, those things go wrong, so wrong that all we can do is record your name on that wall."

She stretched her aching leg and caught someone staring at her leg. "Yes, there are potions that heal damage as if it had never happened, and clerics to pray over you, spells and herbs and all sorts of things to prevent the kind of damage you see on me. Let me clue you in on something. They're not always there when you need them." She tapped the huge gouge in her leg. "The demon that bit me had just eaten our cleric and after we finally killed the damn thing, we were lucky to live long enough to stagger into the next town, a week away. Once a wound gets to a certain point of healing, it can't be fixed."

She ran her hand over her skull. "Other things, like dragon acids and some sorts of fires make healing nearly impossible, even if it is right there and administered quickly. My body looks like it does because a black dragon caught me full on with her breath weapon attack."

One of the people stiffened. "I know of you. You were the fighter that distracted Nerlilonous the Greedy when she attacked Haven. You held her attention for nearly an hour, until help could arrive."

Deirda nodded. "Yes, that was me, and this is the result. I was one of the best then, but sometimes, if you choose this life, you'll run into a position where the choices are between death or something worse." She looked at each of them. "I made that choice, and it was only by the grace of the gods that I survived, although there were times in the early days when I questioned that grace.

She stood up. "Allow me to lay it out for you. The red door will take you to the Academy. The blue door will take you back to town. Think about what I have said, and be aware that we're going to drive you hard, and the only rules or laws in the Academy are ours. No one will help you if an instructor smacks the shit out of you for being stupid or careless. You will work a sixteen hour day, every day until you quit, die or graduate. We don't slack off here, we never stop driving you."

She looked at them again, her one eye evaluating them. "We'll put you through hell, people, we'll make you cry and sweat and bleed, and never worry about any of it." She touched the vest she wore. "But when you earn this vest, you'll know that you can hold your head up in any crowd and that you can handle anything the world can throw at you, because you, by the gods, survived the Adventurer's Academy."

She disappeared with a pop and another flash of light. The people in the room looked at each other and broke apart to think about it. Some of them had already made up their minds and headed for one or the other of the doors.

Nightsinger looked at her companions. "Interesting talk. I assume it would discourage the weak of spirit."

Grandel snorted, a deep rumbling sound well matched to the huge being. "Almost all of us have come from far away to get this training, and all of us have no real choice. If we want to be the best, we need the training and no one wants to teach a freak, except the Academy."

Nightsinger looked around, seeing agreement in every face but one. She sighed and tapped the being they had named Wildchild on the shoulder. He looked at her and shrugged. "Me not care," he growled around the fangs. "Bird girl save me. I go where bird girl goes."

Nightsinger rubbed her eyes. "Drop the act, my friend. We're the only ones that can hear us."

The furry face of her companion darted a look around. "I thought I smelled you casting a spell, but I wasn't sure," he said in a smooth voice, totally unlike the growling roughness he used in front of other people. Wildchild was close to eight feet tall, and in any group that didn't include Grandel, he'd be taken for an impressively muscled and clawed fighter of some sort.

The truth was, he was a Wizard, or wanted to be one, finding the simplicity of fighting and weapons to be far too boring for his quick and agile mind. He lived for books and research, despite the keen senses and ample evidence that he would not be the first to die if they were stranded out in the woods anywhere.

Nightsinger smiled and looked at the group. They'd all made the journey here, finding each other on the way and banding together for mutual support and protection. They were all different enough that by themselves, they had problems of various sorts while travelling, and sticking together was simple logic.

Alara stood up, drawing the eyes of many of the people that remained. She looked elven, but something about her drew the eye. Nightsinger and the rest of the group knew that despite her elven looks, she was the daughter of a Nymph and a Dryad, two races known for their physical beauty and Alara had inherited the other-worldly grace and beauty of both of her parents.

She'd had a hard time with slavers and pretty much every male and no few females that saw her when she was travelling alone, simply because she raised lust in anyone that found beauty in the female form and no few of those people had attempted to take her, one way or another. She'd been fortunate enough to run into Grandel early on and they had collected the rest of them.

Nightsinger wasn't sure how she'd ended up in charge of the motley bunch, but somehow, they'd all started looking to her when situations arose and she had managed to get them all here intact, so she must be doing something right.

Her thoughts were interrupted as Alara spoke, in that voice that automatically drew the ear, and that Nightsinger so envied. "We're going to do this, we know that. You don't need to ask us, Nightsinger."

Nightsinger smiled. "Then let's go be tortured."

Rowan moved from the wall where he'd stood since they arrived. "I don't think they're going to torture us, Lady," he said in his quiet voice. "They are just a school, after all is said and done."

The group started toward the red door. "Are you certain, my friend? That briefing didn't sound like this would be fun and those names on the wall tell me it's not going to be easy."

_**OoOoOoO**_

Rowan entered the room that the group had been assigned and moved to his sleeping place against the wall. Since he couldn't lay down, his 'bed' was a pile of dirt in a box, where he could sink his roots at night. Rowan was another of the strange mixes, the son of a Treant and a polymorphed Druid.

He was a vaguely human shaped being, but only if that human had been fused with a tree. He had thick bark like skin and his feet resembled the roots of some large tree, uprooted and mobile.

Nightsinger suppressed her shudder. Some of her companions had been created by magic, but most were the result of 'normal' sexual relations between races never meant to mix. Normally, a Treant and an Elf were not compatible and how Rowan's mother had managed to carry a child across the polymorph barriers that usually prevented anything like this was a mystery.

Rowan settled into his place and looked at Nightsinger. "Do you remember my saying they wouldn't torture us?"

Nightsinger blinked and then remembered that conversation, two weeks ago, just before they passed through the red door that had ended up with them here. "Yes, why?"

"I was wrong, Lady. They are good enough to make Marcus envious."

Nightsinger heard the note of pain in his voice. "What were you doing?"

Rowan leaned against the wall. "Instructor Marshall Pintern wanted to explore the limits of my flexibility, as it is my single largest restriction, according to him."

Nightsinger winced. She'd had her own session with the Instructor Marshall, who was tasked with teaching them the weapons to defend themselves. Each person had an individual weapons plan, tailored to take advantage of their strengths and reduce their weaknesses.

Nightsinger was a flyer. She naturally thought of taking to air for any trip more than a few feet unless she was indoors or otherwise unable to fly. The Instructor Marshall had wanted to know how far she could go without flight, and he taken her on a short 'walk'. She'd lasted nearly four miles before falling back from his pace, and completed nine miles on sheer will. Will, however, doesn't help when the skin on the bottom of your feet is peeling off in strips. Nightsinger hadn't walked that far in her life, and she was almost certain she never would again if she could help it.

The Instructor Marshall had different plans. Nightsinger was walking ten miles once a week and was barred from flying any time she was with anyone that couldn't fly. Since there were only four other people in the school that could fly, she was walking. A lot.

They both looked up as Grandel and Alara walked in. Rather, Grandel walked in, carefully carrying a sleeping Alara. He laid her down on her bed and turned to see the other two smiling at him. "What?"

"Grandel, you're fifteen feet tall, and thicker than some trees."

Rowan looked at her. "Hey, I resemble that remark."

Nightsinger hushed him. "The point is, you look like the biggest, toughest monster on the block, but inside, you're softer than my feathers."

Grandel frowned at her and finally sighed as she just smiled. "Someone has to take care of her."

Alara was nice. She was sweet, innocent and so totally unaware of what she did to other people that it bordered on scary. If it wasn't for the supernatural abilities that didn't show, she'd have been in someone's harem or dead by now. Only a lot of luck and those innate gifts had saved her before Grandel had taken her under his wing, so to speak, and he was as fiercely protective as any mother hen.

Grandel looked at Nightsinger. The winged Drow had startled them all when she dropped out of the sky in the middle of a fight with some bandits, but she'd been trained in her remote home, and she was an asset to any group. She was also a natural leader, taking charge without even realizing it. "What are you working on?" he asked, seeing rolls of parchment scattered around her.

She looked around, and waved a hand at the door, causing a blue flare around it. "The Instructors, in an effort to train us to the fullest, want a private report on our respective abilities. I'm trying to figure out how much to tell them."

Grandel frowned. "There are a few things they should not know."

"No kidding," Nightsinger said sarcastically. "I hadn't really planned on telling them that Unthev can suck their brains right our of their skulls."

Rowan had come closer. "I think, lady, that hiding Mara's fire is far more pressing."

Nightsinger looked at him. "I know, and I am so glad that we can hide it. I don't even want to know what would happen if anyone ever figured out that we have a Spellfire wielder with us."

Nightsinger opened her mouth but paused as she looked toward the simple ward on the door.

The rest of their group came staggering, limping or, in one case, floating through the door. Everyone found places and Nightsinger resealed the wards that warned her if anyone approached the door. Since Nightsinger had mounted the Krydas Crystal in the room, no scrying or otherworldly spying that she knew of would work in this room, leaving the door as the only way to eavesdrop on the group. When she was finished, she looked at her friends.

Unthev saw the ward go up and gratefully removed his mask, exposing a face that gave away his Mind Flayer heritage plainly. No one else had four tentacles surrounding their mouths, tentacles that could exact the brain from a skull with as much ease as an axe, but for a far worse use. Unthev could 'eat' the brain and learn things from it. Combine that with the black skin of his Drow parent, and Unthev had good reason to go masked. Mind Flayers were one of the most hated and feared races in the underworld, and the Drow were at the top of that list.

Miranda was a half second behind him, stripping her clothes off and tossing them on her bed. Miranda was an impossibility in more ways than one. Daughter of a Succubus, her other parent had been an Erinyes. Since both Erinyes and Succubi were female, that was impossible. Both races were from negatively aligned planes, insuring that every being born there was evil, but Miranda wasn't evil, not even neutral, but good in a bizarre way. The Devil and Demon had combined to create the friendliest, most cheerful person in any world. She smiled at everyone she met, unless they were openly trying to kill her, a situation that happened fairly often.

Miranda was beautiful, born of a mother that lived by draining humans during acts of lust and designed by nature to incite that lust. Her Erinyes parent was also attractive and something of their combined nature had been passed to Miranda, as she considered clothing to be a nuisance, one she put up with when needed, but to be dumped at the earliest opportunity.

Since Wildchild, with his coat of fur, Rowan, with his bark-like skin, and Nightsinger, who came from a race that mated on the wing were all from races that hardly ever wore clothes of any type, most of the group barely noticed her undressing these days. Alara also had no modesty taboos, as few of the Fey understood clothes and neither Nymphs nor Dryads were among that number. The end result was that half or more of the group was commonly nude.

Nightsinger grinned as she remembered a pair of humans that had stumbled on the girls bathing during their journey. Miranda might have wings with the blood red feathers of her Erinyes ancestor, but she had their beauty as well. A red headed woman, she had a full, lush figure with exotic slanted eyes, designed by her Succubus parent to make men do her bidding.

Alara was simply beautiful in an otherworldly ethereal fashion. Her hair tended to change with the seasons and right now, was beginning to turn to the golden and red hues of fall. Alara's every move was graceful in that manner that shouted Fey louder than words. Add the look of Innocence that she perpetually wore, and she was well assured of looks and offers.

Mara was a simple human next to the others, unable to match their inhuman beauty, but then, a man didn't have to worry about drooling on himself around her and she was toned and fit, with no excess fat or obvious deformities. She did have a deep distrust of people and wouldn't be with the group now, except that she'd been unconscious when they found her, victim of a brutal gang rape that had left her for dead. She'd been three weeks healing, and by then, she was as much a part of their group as anyone with outward differences.

Nightsinger, with her black wings, was obviously not normal either, but she was a Drow, and evil or winged, Drow are still elves and few people have seen an ugly elf.

She was shorter and slimmer than the rest of them, with the slight build of an elf, except through the shoulders where most of the extra muscles she needed to fly were. She wore her white hair in a single long braid, which she coiled around her waist when she wanted to keep it out of the way. She was also lighter than they, having hollow bones like any other bird. Nightsinger's one advantage over Miranda, who could be six foot tall, heavily muscled, carrying a load and yet still fly, was that Miranda's flight depended on a magical talent she was born with. In any type of area where magic didn't work, Miranda couldn't fly. Nightsinger, on the other hand, was born to fly under her own power, no magic involved and could fly anywhere she could find the room.

Dralia was apparently elven, at least until she changed into a humanoid shaped mass of shimmering light, courtesy of her Ghaele parent. Like the others, she was inhumanly beautiful, because of her father's extra planar Eladrin nature.

Shadow was almost prosaic next to this bunch, as well as being the shortest of the group. She was the daughter of a Halfling father who dallied with a Pixie. Of all the cross-breeds in the group, Shadow was the most normal, except for the wings that allowed her to fly. She was only three feet tall, but she was a part Fey, and that meant she was as charismatic as anyone else in the group.

The two humans that had come across the bunch of them swimming and bathing in a sun heated pool in the forest had thought so, judging by their stunned gazes. Nightsinger snickered as she remembered Alara's innocent invitation to join them. One human had to be pulled from the pool, as he'd jumped in wearing his breastplate and mail. The other had simply stood there, staring dumbly at them until they dressed and left the two of them there. Nightsinger had sometimes wished she could have heard the story they told about that event.

"What's so funny?" Miranda was smiling, which didn't surprise anyone here. She always smiled, right up until you angered her. Then the demonic/devil heritage came out and she usually attempted to remove you from the ranks of the living in small bloody pieces. Miranda was a happy go lucky girl, convinced the world was a nice place, and anyone that disturbed her view of the world, by doing something bad to her or her friends rarely lived to regret his actions.

Nightsinger smiled wider. "I was remembering those humans at the pool."

Miranda snickered. "That poor wizard. I could have taken everything he owned and he would have just stared at me."

Dralia frowned at them "Just remember, our looks have gotten us all into more trouble than we want to remember. I, for one, would rather not have to kill every third male on the planet just to live in peace."

Miranda nodded. "I agree. I want to be known for something besides a great set of tits."

Mara snarled. "Go ahead and kill them. It's not like it would be a big loss." Mara was the most violent of the group, and since they hadn't known her before she was attacked, they didn't know if this was a result of the rape, or it was simply her nature. They did know that they never allowed Mara out in public without someone to control her. She was just angry enough at the world to use the Spellfire she'd being trying to hide since it manifested, and that would open a can of worms none of them wanted to touch.

Everyone knew the story of Shandril, from the Faerun continent, and none of them felt like fighting all the forces that would want the ability to warp, change or utterly destroy most magic, simply by being around. If Mara didn't keep tight control of her ability, it would absorb every trace of magic within thirty feet of her.

Add the ability to return the absorbed magic as blue fire and the inability of most shields and wards to stop the fire and you had one of the deadliest weapons in the world. Mages would come from everywhere to study this power, as it manifested so rarely that most people believed that there could only be one living Spellfire wielder at a time.

Rowan sighed as he brushed Mara's arm with his hand. "Not all men are like that, Mara. Take reasonable precautions, but do not judge all people by the actions of a few."

Mara frowned, but subsided. The group discussed what talents they were going to make publicly known to the instructors and which ones they would keep secret while they cleaned and maintained the gear they had been given on the first day.

There was a lot of gear, as the Academy had created the gear list from hundreds of years of practical experience. Everyone's gear list was slightly different, tailored toward the path they were taking. There were a few things that were common to every list, like rope and rations, a few common alchemical potions and a couple of magical potions, but other things, like the bard's instruments or the thief's tools that were job specific.

The gear all had to be maintained by the owner though and the instructors were exceedingly harsh with anyone whose gear wasn't in perfect condition every morning.

So far, the classes they had were fairly simple. Customs and traditions covered the common ways of life of the dominant races of Grame Manifesto, Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and more. This class also covered the laws of the five biggest empires of the planet and the ways of life on each of the various continents.

Weapon training was actually two different classes. Everyone, regardless of their actual paths, worked out daily with the two most common weapons of Grame Manifesto, the long sword and long bow. In addition, everyone had a favoured weapon and they had classes in that weapon. They also had lessons with every weapon common to most places, enough so that they wouldn't hurt themselves with them if they had to pick them up at some point.

Some people, like Nightsinger, had favoured weapons because of their racial heritage and others, like Wildchild, had natural weapons and those weapons were trained in the individual lessons.

Language classes were easy for most people, as the Academy taught the basic trade language, referred to as Common. Very few people came to the Academy without knowing at least the basics of Common, and the classes merely expanded on that knowledge.

The Academy also taught everyone Draconic, as it was the most common language used in all forms of magical writing and bad things tended to happen to adventurers that couldn't recognize it.

Some of the students would have more lessons in languages when the individual lessons started in earnest. Nightsinger, as a Bard, would be expected to learn at least enough of the major languages to get by, the druids would be taught the Druidical language, the mages of all types would delve deeper into Draconic and the rogues would learn the Thief's Cant.

That was still three months away though. Right now, they were being taught about every piece of their gear and waiting for those pieces of gear that had to be custom made. Nightsinger could hardly wait to get her bow.

The Academy made a special bow for every student. Custom made for each person, the Academy bow was the end result of centuries of bow making. For the one person it was tailored for, it was a work of art. Other people could use it, but unless that other person was as nearly identical as a twin, it would not give them the same results.

Nightsinger stopped wool-gathering as she looked at the list they would be giving the instructors. Some of their talents were impossible to hide.

Shadow, in order to fly, actually shrank, from three feet high to just under four inches high. That required special clothes, which would shrink with her, so that talent was on the list.

Dralia's otherworldly shape needed no special clothes, but it was impossible to hide a rainbow coloured mass of light, so it was one the list.

Nightsinger, Shadow and Miranda all had wings, and that meant custom clothes as well. It also required special armour, that wouldn't interfere with flight, while still protecting them as much as possible.

Drake Leatherhand, the Armourer that dealt with the people that didn't want or couldn't use metal armour had taken the entire group as a personal challenge. Of the entire group, only Dralia and Grandel would be using metal armour.

Nightsinger grinned as she recalled the scene with the Armourers. Grandel stood fifteen feet high and was nearly that wide, a mass of muscle that looked as if he lacked only a lever to move the entire planet. The smiths had looked at him and swore. Making armour on that scale would be a pain, and since armour often got dented or bashed up in training, they'd have to make at least two sets of it.

Drake had looked at the winged people, the walking tree and the furred creature and sighed. It was going to be one of those days.

Of them all, only Mara and Wildchild would have no armour. Arcane casters had a hard time casting in armour, and the two of them chose to forgo the specialized training that would allow them to use light armours.

Nightsinger blinked and shook her head as she realized she'd drifted away from her list again. She must be even more exhausted than she thought, to be so undisciplined.

Alara's charming abilities, which were mostly unconscious, were on the list, as were Nightsinger's innate abilities.

Nightsinger's race, the Kal'Droth, had certain abilities that helped them hunt from the air, and since they were known, although not widely yet, she added them to the list.

Rowan's ability to talk to plants, Shadow's ability to talk to any Fey blooded creature, those were common knowledge, so they went on the list.

Nearly half the group had some sort of extra sight, from darkvision to Dralia's True Sight, the gift of her Ghaele father. All of them went on the list, since training in them would teach all of them to get the most from them.

Wildchild had remarkably acute senses, and could track people by scent.

Grandel had some innate magic from his Eldritch giant parent and some from his elven heritage and they were on the list.

Unthev had certain psionic abilities, some of which went on the list. He also had a couple of abilities from his Drow parent, which also went on the list.

Nightsinger finished the list and thought about the things the group had not chosen to make public, the talents deemed too useful, if they weren't known about, or simply too dangerous to make public.

Mara's Spellfire and Unthev's brain sucking were two of that last group. Unthev could also read minds, and while the instructors knew that he would be able to do that with training, they had decided that his innate ability to do so would be a hole card they kept hidden.

Miranda's demonic nature and her devil ancestry both came with 'gifts' that they decided would disturb most folks, and they 'forgot' to mention her ability to incite and absorb lust in most people. They also 'forgot' her ability from her Erinyes half to incite unreasoning anger and fury.

Nightsinger had not yet told even the group that she had a rare talent, even among the Kal'Droth. Like most of her kin, Nightsinger had both perfect pitch and an ear for music. The Kal'Droth had been singing as a passion and as their only real form of entertainment for longer than humans had been on Grame Manifesto, and had the best voices of any race. Everyone that knew about them knew that.

That some few, maybe one in ten thousand Kal'Droth could weave magic into their voices, and speak or sing a spell, that talent was not public knowledge and Nightsinger saw no reason to change that. She had enough problems looking like a Drow without people fearing that she could bespell them with a simple conversation.

She sighed and checked her wards again. Satisfied that they were as safe as she could make them, she went to bed, knowing that they would be up before the sun again.

_**OoOoOoO**_

The Instructors looked at each other. They had all lived the life they trained the students for, and all of them had graduated the Academy. The Instructor's course, the training that every instructor had to pass in order to teach here was harder than the courses the students went through, and it taught them a good many things that the students wouldn't learn here, if at all.

One of those things was that many of their students, especially the exotic ones, had talents and abilities they didn't want to tell anyone about.

To prevent that, and to make sure they were not unleashing another Markus on an unsuspecting world, they routinely spied on all the students.

The group of exotics led by the Kal'Droth Nightsinger had caught their eye instantly, and for a dozen reasons. First, this was the single most mixed group of exotics ever to come to the Academy. That they had come together, and were training as a group, and living together was another curious thing.

The different types of beings, most of whom should be enemies, was also a matter of no small discussion. One Celestial, teamed with a Demon devil mix, two Drow types working hand in hand with Fey, a Treant and the Bugbear Dire wolf. Most of these people should be natural enemies, and yet they stood together against everyone else.

Added to that, Nightsinger had a Krydas Crystal that she routinely used to prevent spying. Such a thing was generally used by people with a great deal of money and a high need for secrecy. Why she had it, they didn't know, but it was just another curious thing about the group.

"Amazing range of talents," commented the Instructor Marshall. "I couldn't build a better combat group if I tried."

The Instructor Marshall was a human in his mid forties, with greying hair and ice blue eyes that could catch an error with a weapon at one hundred paces. He also had the voice to let the offender know about the mistake, as well as anyone else within a hundred paces.

The Instructor Mage, who oversaw all the arcane training shook her head. "That's not just a combat group, Pintern. The magical abilities they have, and the raw power of the sorceress would make any guild sit up and take notice, and that's before you mention the Spellfire." She was an elven woman, calm and graceful, with the wisdom of ages in her eyes. Since she had been an adventurer for nearly four thousand years and had been alive for more than ten thousand years, she had earned that look.

"Pelor has claimed Miranda for his own. She has his favour right now." Everyone looked disturbed at that. The Gods were good or bad, according to their nature, but they all had one thing in common. When a God or Goddess took a personal interest in your life, that life tended to be very exciting, full of magic and wonder, with adventures around every corner.

Those lives also tended to be very short. The Instructor Cleric, who had told the group about Pelor's interest, was a gnome, short even for his race and with an aura of power around him that made some people nervous. Few people even became as powerful as he was, and fewer of them spent much time around other people.

Pintern looked around. "More than their talents, how is this group even together? The Ghaele girl, Dralia wants to be a paladin and she should be at odds with Miranda, simply because of their heritages."

The arcane master sniffed. "Have you met Miranda, Pintern? I see both the creatures that were her parents in her, and I hate those groups with a passion that worries me sometimes, but I could no more dislike that girl than I could stop the sun from rising tomorrow."

The cleric nodded. "She is possibly the friendliest person I've ever even heard of, and yet, it is simply her nature, not a spell or ability. She truly believes that everyone that is not trying to kill her is a friend that she hasn't met yet."

Pintern winced. "That will get her killed," he predicted.

"Maybe, but then again, she has a lot of gifts, from both sides of her heritages, powerful friends and she's watched by the Gods. I think it will be safe to say that we will be hearing from her and her friends for a long time to come." The cleric sighed. "Right now, we need to teach them how to fully utilize theirs gifts and talents, even the ones they chose not to tell us about. How do we do that without letting them know we have a way to disrupt their crystal?"

"More important, how do we train a Spellfire wielder, without the world finding out what she is?" asked Pintern. "The Academy has great defences and we can call on powerful allies, but even so, I doubt we could hold off all the groups that would want to examine her, own her, control her or just deny her to others."

The arcane master frowned. "There is a way, but it's nearly as dangerous as letting everyone know what she is. There is a form of magecraft that teaches a mage to cast all their spells with similar visible signatures. You've both seen it before, remember that woman who always cast her spells as small green hands?"

The other two nodded. "If Mara was to learn that skill, and choose to cast her spells as blue fire, anyone watching her would soon figure out that she was using a signature spell effect and think no more of it, as long as he didn't actually see her using the Spellfire."

The cleric was frowning thoughtfully. "Before we could suggest that, we would have to know about her talent. Since they're not going to tell us, how do you plan on finding out?"

The elf woman smiled. "That is Pintern's job. Mara has a session with you next week, first thing in the morning. I would appreciate it if you would wear her out, as close to passing out as you can get her."

Pintern nodded. "Easy enough to do, but why?"

"Because she has a class with me directly afterwards, and I'm simply going to assign her a candle watching meditation."

Pintern snickered. "She'll be asleep in a few seconds."

The arcane master smiled. "I know. I also know that she'll loosen that iron control of hers, and start absorbing the ambient magic in the room. At that point, I'll wake her, and we'll have a nice little conversation, which I will promise to keep secret, if she follows a few suggestions about keeping her talent hidden. I am no more eager to have her exposed as a Spellfire Wielder while she's here than she is."

"Magical talents aside, how much is that Kal'Droth hiding?" The weapons master looked at the other two as they frowned. "She's well trained in a good many areas. I have to push her hard, any time I allow her to use hers wings in the Salle. From the air, she's bloody dangerous. She's less well trained for ground combat, but I'm working on that. I would have said that using a bastard sword from the air is foolish, but her people must have been doing it for centuries, because her whole fighting style is built around that sword and her whip." He paused, thinking about the reports of the other trainers that reported to him. "Her woods skills are quite good, again, if she's allowed to fly. She can ghost through the woods on her wings quite well, and she has a few innate talents that help her out."

The cleric sighed. "The Kal'Droth are sworn to follow Eilistraee, the only one of the Drow gods that didn't follow Lloth during the Sundering. That is why they use that weapon, as it is Eilistraee's favourite weapon."

He hesitated. "I know no more about her, except that her goddess has marked her. I think she is a fledgling cleric of the Drow goddess."

"She can sense life, within a certain area when she wants to. She can outline those people she finds that way with a form of faerie fire and she has a couple of other gifts I do not know yet."

"She has the potential to be a Spellsinger," said the arcane master quietly. "I think she knows it, and that is a secret she has not mentioned at all. Since it has never come up about the other Kal'Droth, I have to wonder if she keeps it hidden, or if she even knows about it?"

Pintern frowned. "What is a Spellsinger?"

"A Spellsinger can cast a spell by singing, humming or in the strongest of them, simply by talking. I can hear it in her voice, and feel the magic in her words. I would not have recognized it, except I once spent a hundred years or so adventuring with a Spellsinger."

Pintern frowned. "Do you mean that she could learn to cast a spell on someone with a chat?"

The elf nodded slowly. "I have not heard any evil of her people, but this is a dangerous power, both to others and to her, should it become common knowledge. Mages need strange words, gestures and small bits of this and that to cast spells, and still the common people fear them. What would they do, did they know she needs not those things, that her slightest word might carry a charm or spell?"

The three instructors talked about the new people in their care for a couple of hours. The solutions they came up with were stop gap measures at best, but they were the best they could do.

Hopefully, they would be enough.

_**OoOoOoO**_

Nightsinger arced up, casting a spell at Grandel as she did so. Grandel disappeared, confusing the small band of orcs that had thought to ambush the group.

It is, however, a lot easier to think about ambushing someone than it is to do it, when the people you're trying to ambush have among them, two people who can talk to animals and those same two can talk to the very trees you hide behind.

The orcs numbered about twenty five, and with surprise on their side, they would have been dangerous to the eleven person party out on their third and final training mission with the Academy. Without that surprise and with the hastily conceived plan the adventurers had come up with, the orcs were having a very bad day.

One of their enemies had become a scintillating mass of light and was throwing beams of light that burned worse than the hottest fire.

The huge being in armour had disappeared, only to reappear in their very midst, swinging a sword longer than most of the orcs were tall.

Worse yet, three of the group had taken to the air. The smallest of the bunch was staying back, peppering the orcs with tiny bolts that made the orcs sleepy.

The two with the red and black wings were worse. They looped and spun, a dizzying aerial display that turned deadly every time they came within reach of the orcs. The black winged one was snapping a whip around an orc's neck or other extremity, and wrenching the whip sharply. Must of the time, the bones of the orcs were not strong enough to haul the orc into the air and they broke.

Since the orcs with stronger frames could only watch helplessly as the flyer whip cracked them into the trunks of tree at speeds faster than any normal creature could run, their heavier bones were not a good thing.

The red winged one would simply choose her target and dive on the unfortunate being, slamming into that orc with the heavy mace in her left hand and the lighter one in her right hand. The entire time, she was loudly praying for victory and glory.

It didn't help the orc band's morale when she started glowing with a pale light.

Two of them were spell casters, standing side by side and sending bolts of energy into the orc mass, sending the more cowardly of the bunch fleeing less than a minute after the first arrow was fired.

An older human male stood to the side, watching the entire thing and sending an occasional arrow into the orc ranks.

Yet another of them stood still and merely looked at one of the orcs. After a few seconds, the orc nodded agreeably and cut his own throat.

The bravest of the orcs was trying to make a battle of it until a tree came to life and smashed one of them flat.

The orc morale went straight to the Abyss at that point and they started to flee, only to find arrows coming from nowhere and two large wolves snapping at their heels and throats.

Late that night, the last two survivors would limp into their caves and tell the story. They would not be believed, but the scepticism of the other orcs can be excused. Instructor Darry Leafspringer, the elven ranger assigned to guide them on this trip had been an instructor at the Academy for seventy years and an adventurer for nearly seven thousand years before that and he'd never heard of any group with the range of talents and abilities this one had.

If they managed to stay together, not get killed and had a decent bit of luck, they'd be another of those groups that Bards sang about.

After the surviving orcs fled, pursued for a short distance by Alara and Rowan, who firmly disliked the things orcs tended to do to the balance of nature, Darry watched as Shadow went over the corpses, searching them deftly and with the speed that comes from hours of practice and training.

"Not much on this bunch, Nightsinger," she reported. "Twenty-eight gold in assorted coin and the leader was carrying this." She handed Nightsinger a smaller dagger, which glowed with a faint blue light.

Nightsinger examined the dagger briefly and handed it to Miranda. "Anything wrong with it, Miranda?"

Miranda took the dagger and examined it with one of her gifts. Miranda could detect the presence of good or evil in objects and people with a bit of concentration and she focussed on the dagger now. "Nothing," she said after a moment. "It doesn't seem like a very strong magic, either."

Nightsinger nodded and looked around. "Anyone mind if Shadow carries it?"

Everyone shrugged. Grandel smiled. "I need a toothpick," he said.

Shadow rolled her eyes. "Just because you're bigger than some buildings," she started to say, when Alara and Rowan returned.

"There's something over here you should see," Alara said quietly.

Nightsinger looked up. Alara and Rowan had nearly matching looks of disgust on their faces. "Let's go people. Shadow, you're up top this time. Rowan, lead us to your find."

Shadow shrank, shifting into her smaller form, the only form she could fly in, even though she had wings in both forms. She took off, staying well out of reach of normal creatures and fifty to sixty feet in front of the group, close enough to note course changes, but far enough out front to give warning of most hazards.

Alara and Rowan sent their animal companions, a mated pair of grey wolves on scout around the group.

Darry watched the group, not saying much of anything. By the third trip, most of the Academy students were fairly good at the simple job of moving from point a to b, and very rarely needed reminding about anything.

Darry kept one eye open for trouble as he followed the group. Every group in the Academy had an advisor, a senior instructor who was still capable of adventuring and who went on the field training with the group.

Usually, the group were those students that were all learning the same trade, and their instructor was a master of that craft. Sometimes, like now, a group would come to the Academy presorted and wanting to stay together.

Few of them were as large at this group, but Darry understood why the group of exotics banded together. Alara needed the protection of beings that could interact with her and not feel desire, and several of the others needed people around them that could remind them that they were not just 'damn Drow freaks' or 'demon blooded' or any one of a hundred other insults that had been thrown at the group on the first two trips out of the Academy.

Darry grinned. One or two of the comments had come from people in the Academy as well, but the Instructors, who had seen first hand that evil comes in every form imaginable, were quick to deal with those idiots.

Nightsinger, who had been trained in her hidden valley home to deal with just that sort of stupidity, had found a far more interesting way to deal with those people. Where she'd found a spell to make people blurt out everything they were thinking, Darry didn't know, but the results were amusing.

He still smiled at the thought of the time she'd hit one of the students with that spell in the middle of his session with Instructor Marshall Pintern. The things he'd been accusing the Instructor of in his mind where not possible without stronger magic than most gods had and the look on his face as he realized that he'd just said those things out loud was beautiful.

Pintern had merely stared at the shivering student. "I would never do that with an ogre mage. They're much too fragile for that," was his comment. The smile he bestowed on the student then brought a small whimper from him. "You, on the other hand, should be much stronger. Let's find out, shall we? Go get your gear, all of it. I'm adding fifteen miles to this trip for every minute it takes you to get back."

Instructor Marshall Pintern had not gotten the position of head weapons instructor at the Academy by luck. He was the best with any weapon he knew, and he'd forgotten more about weapons than most people ever knew. He could also use them well, as nearly sixty years of adventuring had shown.

The Bards still sing of his defence in the Dragon's Teeth Gap. The Gap was a small pass through the Crystal Wall mountains, narrowing down to just eight feet wide at one point and it was there that Pintern made his stand.

He was scouting for an adventuring party when they found the garrison dead, apparently killed by some sort of poison. The rest of the group did the sensible thing and went after the garrison in Forestwall, nine hours away. Pintern stayed behind. They'd been gone about ten hours when the orcs came. One human fighter held the gap, holding the combined forces of seven orc tribes at bay for over eight hours, until the army could get a troop up there. The mass of bodies stacked like cord wood around his position told anyone that saw the scene everything they needed to know.

Eight-four heads were recovered from the pile. There might have been more dead, but most of the bodies were dismembered in assorted pieces, so no accurate count could ever be made.

The Marshall and the student, a human studying the ways of a warrior, walked out of the Academy five minutes later. What they did on that seventy-eight mile trip remains between the two of them, but the two of them were out of potions, the student's healing gear was almost gone and he was still in need of the Infirmary for two days.

He had learned to change his mind about the exotics, or at least to hold his tongue about them.

Darry came back to the present as they stopped. He watched as Alara led Nightsinger to a shallow ditch. He frowned as Nightsinger mantled her wings. To anyone that spent very much time with the Kal'Droth race, those wings spoke volumes about their emotions. Nightsinger was angry at something.

She turned then and motioned to him. Darry walked up and looked into the pit. "We're going to put the Academy mission on hold," she said abruptly, and Darry could hear the loathing in her voice. He stared at the bodies in the pit and swore silently.

At least three of those bodies had died of vampire bites, and this group would never allow such an abomination to stand. Darry made a quick count. Nightsinger hated the undead, Miranda was a Cleric of a deity that hated the undead, the two druids hated the disruption of nature that was the walking dead, and oh yes, just to put the icing on the cake, they had a freaking paladin with them.

He frowned. Of the group, Nightsinger, Dralia, Miranda, Alara and Rowan would go after the undead from a sense of duty or as a religious obligation. That meant Grandel would go, since he followed Alara even more than he did Nightsinger.

"_Blood sucking freaks,"_ came a thought in all of their heads. _"I despise the vermin. I vote we hunt them down." _Unthev's mental tone was laced with hate and a touch of fear.

Darry sighed. He hadn't known that Unthev had such a hatred of undead. That was seven of the ten, and it had been decided, they were going to hunt vampires.

Nightsinger looked at the group. "Wildchild, would you and Grandel help Miranda bury the dead, please? Make sure they can't rise again while you're at it. Rowan, Alara, would you find us four or five stakes each? Shadow, Mara, stand to the guard would you? Dralia, Unthev, you two can go over undead legends and lore. When everyone is back, you'll be refreshing all of us on that topic."

She turned to Darry. "This is outside of your job, Instructor. We would not think less of you, should you choose to return to the Academy."

Darry smiled slightly. "I would think less of me, and the other Instructors would laugh at me if I lost an adventuring group. What do you want me to do?"

Nightsinger nodded and turned away. "Nothing for now. I'm sure you will come in handy later though."

Darry shook his head. Nightsinger was a nice, polite young lady, but she had far more faith in her group, or almost any exotic than she did 'normal' beings. Given a choice between a human and almost any exotic being, she'd choose the exotic. Of the exotics, she preferred the flyers. Darry understood that somewhat, having watched her for nearly three years now.

Nightsinger thought in three dimensions as naturally as people without wings thought in two. People without wings or other means of flight rarely thought of defending from air attacks or using the air for offence, other than siege engines. Nightsinger, like all natural flyers, always thought in three dimensions, which gave her an advantage in some things.

That bias toward exotics though, could be a liability. Not all of the magical fusions and half breeds were good in nature. Nightsinger's automatic preference could end up landing her in hot water. Darry made a mental note to discuss that with her.

An hour later, they were outfitted as well as they could be, under the circumstances. Everyone had six stakes and at least two vials of holy water.

Dralia and Miranda, as a paladin and a cleric, had six vials each, part of the packing list for those of a religious nature. They both had holy symbols as well, as did Nightsinger and Mara. The rest of the group followed nature herself, like Alara and Rowan, or they had not bothered to get holy symbols of their faith and Darry smiled as he heard Wildchild muttering about getting one.

Anything that gave you an advantage was not to be scorned or disregarded, even if vampires were rare. That was what these training missions were all about, finding out the little lessons that would mean the difference between life and death later, when an instructor wasn't there with healing potions and wands, and in the event of a dire emergency, a magical gate that would take them all back to the Academy in the blink of an eye.

Darry sighed as he listened to the vampire information being hashed out among the group. Recommended ways to confront and kill them, weaknesses, abilities, everything they'd been taught in the academy classes was retold and discussed. Darry interjected a comment or two, based on his encounters with vampires over the years.

When they were ready, Shadow shrunk down to her smaller size, a humanoid shape just four inches tall and started out, flying slowly and staying in sight. Shadow was leading for two reasons. First, she was the smallest, and the hardest to hit if she was seen and she had the pixie's innate ability to turn invisible.

Rowan and Alara went next, using their animal friends and their abilities as nature Fey and druids to talk to everything they passed. Animals, plants, it didn't matter to them, they asked them about recent travellers.

The plants were not very good at that, as transient things didn't often register with them, but the animals of the forest were more likely to notice something moving around and the blood suckers were easily followed.

Animals could smell or sense the wrongness in the undead and they were quick to tell the druids all they could remember, according to their nature.

After a few hours, the group found a path in the woods. It led to a small shrine in one direction, an alter in a glade in the woods. Alara smiled when she saw the shrine. "It's a shrine to Elhonna. There should be a small village somewhere nearby."

Nightsinger frowned, looking at her people. "Dralia, take Mara and find the village. Warn them about the vampires and tell them to stay close to the village. Tell them that you and some companions are going after them and that you will be back after they are gone."

Dralia nodded. "We will be back soon."

Mara and Dralia left, following the path in the other direction. Nightsinger set a guard and the group made camp at the edge of the glade.

Darry, as a ranger, happened to follow Elhonna, and he paid his respects at the shrine, surprised to note Nightsinger doing the same. When he was done, he waited for her. She saw his look and shrugged. "I follow Eilistraee, but paying your respects to the local deities is only common courtesy."

"Not so common, but a good thing to do." Darry sighed, looking at Nightsinger, choosing his words with care. "I have noticed a thing in you that could be a problem, for you and your group. I would talk with you about it, without offence or anger."

Nightsinger looked at him, and the skills and abilities of her training as a bard came to the fore. "Whatever it is, you think it is serious enough to mention in the middle of a mission, and knowing you, it is something that I have done, several times, I would judge. I will not make a promise to withhold anger, but I will hear you out."

"I can ask for no more." Darry frowned, seeking a softer way to say what he had to say. Finally he sighed and just said it. "Nightsinger, you're a racist. You trust the Exotics more than anyone, and lay that trust without knowing them. Your group is made up of good people, but not all of the exotics are as good as your people."

Nightsinger smiled. She looked around and cast a small ward, that would warn her if anyone came near. "I understand why you think that, but it is not as it seems, Instructor. I would ask for your oath, to keep our secrets. If you give it, I will explain why I seem to trust them more."

Darry shrugged. "I have already given such an oath, when I accepted the posting as your field trainer. The Head Instructors required it, since you had some rather special gifts."

Nightsinger nodded. "I base my acceptance of people on several talents in our group. Unthev can read minds, Dralia can sense the presence of evil or good, and a couple of the others can read the past of a being. All of them use their gifts quite freely and I base my decisions on their informations and my feelings about the individual. Most times, I use a low level bardic ability to keep people away that do not meet our standards. The reason it seems that I trust the Exotics more than normal people is just as simple. Other Exotics have an easier time accepting us than normals."

Darry thought about it. "I see. I didn't realize that you used your respective talents to judge everyone you met."

Nightsinger shrugged. "All of us, even Mara, have had encounters with racists of various types or people who would use us badly. While it may be wrong to do, we are less concerned with morals and more concerned with our survival."

Darry snorted. "Morals are great, but you cannot make a moral decision if you're dead. I see nothing wrong with knowing about the people you meet and interact with." He frowned as he thought about what she'd said. "I have to assume that you have used those skills on me at some point as well."

Nightsinger nodded. "Three times, actually, at the beginning of each training mission."

Darry was about to say something when Dralia and Mara returned. Dralia came straight to Nightsinger. "We have a problem. The Vampires have raided the town twice. From the descriptions, the people from the first raid were the ones we found in the pit. The last group was taken the night before last. One of the townsmen overheard a vampire say that their cattle would last a week."

Nightsinger frowned and motioned everyone in. Dralia gave the group a briefing on what they'd found in the town and descriptions of the eight people still missing. Nightsinger looked at the sky. The day was almost gone. "Dralia, Wildchild, take first watch. We'll be packed up before the dawn. We cannot track the vampires in the dark and running blindly into their lair at night is a good way to get killed."

Nightsinger made sure that the mages would get enough rest to renew their spells and settled in a tree. Kal'Droth had a hard time sleeping prone and tonight she wanted to be rested. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

Unthev woke everyone the next morning and started making a quick meal while the various mages reviewed their spells for the day, making sure that they had spells that would work on undead creatures.

After the group ate, they set out as the sun crested the horizon. Shadow led after Unthev used a psionic ability to create a mind link between the two of them. Shadow would be able to report back to him without alerting anything around with hearing and he could use hand signs to tell the rest of the group.

Dralia had gotten directions from the townspeople and it didn't take long to find the trail of fourteen or fifteen people going through the woods. They followed the trail, Shadow leading, with Wildchild using his senses to find the trail when simple tracks were not enough.

Darry watched the group and had to smile. A psion, a wizard, a paladin, a cleric, a bard, a rogue, a sorceress, a pair of druids and a fighter, all with more abilities than many other people had after years of adventuring. This kiss of vampires wasn't going to know what hit them before they were all staked and dust.

Shadow called a halt at about seven and the group stopped, setting a watch while pulling in tight enough to protect each other. Shadow rejoined them a few minutes later. "The trail goes into a cave ahead. There are two guards standing outside the cave and talking. I listened to them for a minute but they were only discussing sex."

Shadow took a sip from her waterskin. "They're human males. I think, given the topic and the way they were complaining about the lack of women out here, that we could lure them into a trap with a bit of assistance from Miranda."

Nightsinger nodded. "I know just how we'll do it. Listen up everyone."

Harold hated guard duty. That wasn't surprising, as Harold hated everything except getting laid, getting drunk and filling his pockets with gold. Had he known that the group he signed on to work with was going to be the flunkies of a bunch of blood suckers, he'd have found another job or at least asked for more money. Most of the people a free lance mercenary worked for didn't think of you as a potential dinner. He was saying as much to Tom Slicks when a women came out of the woods.

They stared at her dumbfounded. She was nude, with a greenish tint to her skin and hair that matched the falling leaves. "Please help me," she cried as she got closer. "A woodsman is chopping my tree down. Stop him and I will give you anything you want."

Tom and Harold looked at each other and then at the women. The same thought crossed their mind and they smiled. Alara pretended not to notice the way they looked at her. "Please hurry. If my tree dies, so do I."

"No problem. Show us this fool and we'll take good care of him and you." They started off and had barely gone a hundred feet when the sound of chopping came to them. Tom and Harold drew their swords and rushed forward. They entered a small clearing and followed the sound of the axe, which seemed to be coming from the other side of the clearing.

Halfway across the clearing, everything went south on them. The sounds they had been following stopped and things rose up from hidden places all around the clearing. They were trapped in the middle of the clearing and surrounded by monsters or all sorts.

There, a tree walked and pointing a huge longbow at them. A woman with blood red wings pointed another bow at them and a bloody Drow stood beside her. Two wolves stood next to the woman they had followed into this trap and her nudity fell away, revealing more weapons. She smirked at them. "You have two choices right now. You can live or you can die. Make your choice now."

Harold dropped his sword. He didn't know what was going on, but there were monsters and drow, winged beings and animals, walking trees and a giant facing them He was not going to throw his life away fighting these freaks of nature. The armoured giant took a step that covered a third of the clearing and pointed an sword at Tom, who hadn't dropped his weapon yet. "Drop the sword. I will not ask again, I will attack."

Tom Slicks looked at the giant and set his sword down. Another of the group, a slim man with a mask on came closer and looked into Tom's eyes. Tom was suddenly paralysed, unable to do anything but breath as the thing stared at him for several minutes. He felt the thing, which was not a man after all, rifling in his mind, looking at all his actions since they had come to this area to work for the vampires.

Unthev finished his examination of the two men and turned to the group. "I've got good news and bad news. I have the locations of all the physical traps between us and the lair and a complete map of the caves, except the room the vampires sleep in. I also have a count of what we're going to face in there."

Nightsinger nodded. "Now tell us the bad news."

"They have a human necromancer in there and there is a ward that you need an amulet to pass. Without that amulet, the mage is alerted and he has a lot of undead things in there." Unthev frowned as he thought about the information he'd pulled out of the two mercenaries' heads. "On the bright side, Grandel will be able to go with us into most places, but we only have about four hours before they were supposed to be relieved."

Nightsinger thought about it for a few minutes. "We really don't have a choice, do we? We have to go in while the vampires are in their coffins, I don't think any of us really want to wait another day and we're going to have to do something about the necromancer anyway." Nightsinger and Unthev laid out the plan. Unthev gave them the details of the area they were going into and Nightsinger detailed what she wanted everyone to do.

An hour later, the group was in the cave. Unthev had used one of his psionic abilities to create a temporary mind link between the group. They could talk to each without saying anything aloud. _"The trap is disarmed. There's one more trap before we hit the ward line."_

"_Good job, Shadow. Don't get careless."_ Shadow rolled her eyes. Nightsinger was a good leader but sometimes she was such a mother hen. Shadow slipped from one dark area to another. There wasn't supposed to be anyone out here, but she'd gotten cut on their first mission because someone was in an area he wasn't supposed to in. She went down and stopped just short of the area where the ward was supposed to be.

A few seconds later, the rest of the group was there. _ "Alright. Is everyone ready to knock on the door?"_ Nightsinger was about to say something else when Darry interrupted her.

"_Excuse me. I might have a better idea. Mara might be able to disable this ward."_ Darry moved up from the back of the group. _"Her special power absorbs magic. The necromancer only has a few ways to power this spell. If it's powered by himself, he'll know as soon as she tries to do this, but if he tied it to an object, we might be able to get a little closer before we're caught."_

Nightsinger looked at Mara. _"Are you willing to try?"_

Mara nodded. She took a deep breath and concentrated on the gift/curse she'd been born with. Her eyes changed, with small blue flames flickering in them. Her vision changed as the physical forms of her friends wavered and their auras sprang into being for her. Every being had an aura and the more powerful those beings were, the stronger that aura was. She ignored the flickering auras of her friends to look for the magic of the ward. She found the circle of power and moved closer to it. Mara reached out and held her hand just short of the circle.

Mara relaxed the control she maintained over her gift and felt the first flicker of magic being absorbed. As the power grew, it absorbed the magic in the ward faster. She watched the ward with that other sight granted by her curse and knew when the ward fell, lacking the power to work any more. She forced the power down before it started looking for more magic to absorb and turned around. _ "The ward is down. Any sign we've been found yet?"_

Nightsinger looked at Unthev and Wildchild. After they gave her negative responses she shook her head. _ "Mara, you might want to use some of your power. Your eyes are glowing again."_

Mara frowned, concentrating on her power, trying to force it down. She looked at the others after she had damped it as much as she could. The look on Nightsinger's face told her that she hadn't been entirely successful. _ "I'll have to get rid of some energy before I can stop the glow. I'll go last so it doesn't give us away."_

"_There's no need for that. Here comes someone, and from the noise, there are a lot of them. Go ahead and let go. Nobody down here is going to survive this day anyway."_ Nightsinger looked up at Shadow's words.

"_I hope you don't mean the humans that were taken from the town,"_ she said mildly. _"We are supposed to be rescuing them."_

Shadow shrugged. _ "According to Unthev's information, they're all in a cage further in. Nobody that is going to be alive tomorrow is close enough to see her fireworks, and I would rather not have her gather too much power again."_

Nightsinger winced at the memory of watching helplessly as Mara exploded into a fireball of blue flames the one time she'd misjudged the amount of power she could absorb. It had taken all of their healing potions and spells to keep her alive and none of them were eager to have her explode like that in an enclosed area like this. _ "Mara, go ahead and use it. We'll cover you."_

Mara smiled. She had to maintain constant control over her gift and sometimes she hated it. It was a rare occasion that she could unleash the Spellfire without worrying about the consequences. She put her wand in the special pouch that kept her from draining its magic and relaxed her control.

Mara's eyes flared with blue flame and flickers of flame ran up and down her limbs as she stood in the middle of the cave and waited for the things they could hear coming. They weren't long in appearing, and as they saw her they started toward her.

The group of undead were skeletons, bare bones with bits of flesh hanging from them and Mara smiled. Skeletons burned well, and she took a deep breath as they stopped appearing around the bend. There were twenty-five skeletons when the first one reached the point where Mara had decided to use her power.

As the first one was only ten feet away, Mara spread her hands and pushed. A gout of flame erupted from her hands, a sheet that filled the corridor and washed over the skeletons. The cone of fire continued for almost three seconds and then stopped as suddenly as it had come.

The group looked down the corridor. Skeletal remains were scattered over nearly sixty feet and none of the smouldering bones were moving at all. "Beautiful work, Mara. Are you OK?"

Mara smiled at Miranda. _ "I'm fine."_ Miranda looked at Mara, who had the look of a person intoxicated by drink. Mara shrugged sheepishly. _ "It just feels so good to let it go."_

Nightsinger shook her head. That was a dangerous power. She put that thought aside for later and looked at the group. She thought about what they knew about the next bit and was about to assign positions when Miranda spoke again. _ "We're going to have to hurry now. I think the person that created those things will have known when they died and he'll be nervous about what could kill that __many undead at one time."_

Nightsinger frowned. She hadn't thought of that, or she'd have had Mara take them out a few at a time. _"Grandel, take point. I want Miranda behind you and Unthev next. Unthev, have your stakes handy. The rest of you, follow them."_

Grandel took the point and started down the corridor, stepping on the bony remains of the undead. Bone splintered under his feet and he held his great sword, eight feet of tempered steel, at the ready.

Thirty meters down the hall, the hallway ended in a T intersection. The party knew that the left side ended in the cave that was used for trash and other things the vampires threw away but they stopped while Shadow and Dralia went down there to check for any stragglers that might be there. They came back in just a few minutes. _ "A few rats down there, but that's all."_

Nightsinger nodded and motioned to Grandel to continue on. He started down the right side of the intersection. Twenty feet up the way he closed the visor on his armour and and hunched his shoulders as he walked through the arrow trap they knew was there. The arrows struck his armour and broke, except for one that hit a joint. He barely paused as he pulled it out.

Dralia looked at the arrow but didn't see any poison or blood on it and continued following him down the hallway.

Ten minutes and six traps later, Shadow was unlocking the door to the chamber where the mage stayed, according to their informants. She looked up when she was done and nodded. She stepped to the side, pushing the door open at the same time and Grandel charged through the door bellowing a war cry. He was met with a lightning bolt that staggered him and shot down the hallway. The rest of the group was to the sides of the hall though and didn't get hit.

Grandel roared in pain and charged the mage that had struck him. Behind him, the group came pouring in the room, led by Dralia and Miranda. They spread out as they entered, each person covering an area of the room. Nightsinger had started singing as soon as the door opened and everyone was heartened by the martial song she sang as she looked for the area of most danger.

Across the room the mage stared, stunned by the huge figure bearing down on him. His creatures ignored the rest to converge on Grandel who ignored them, intent only on getting close to the mage.

Miranda held up her Holy sunburst of Pelor and prayed. Her prayer was answered as two ghouls turned and started shambling away and four skeletons crumpled to the floor.

Dralia came to a stop in front of two more humans dressed in scale mail and swung at the one on the left. She missed as he jumped to the side. The one on the right side swung at her but his short sword bounced off her shield.

Wildchild cast a quick missile spell that struck a skeleton about to hit Grandel in the back, staggering it and throwing off his swing. An instant later Unthev's mace crushed the skull of the monster and it went down.

Shadow had used her innate ability to turn invisible and shrunk to her small form. She was flying out of reach, near the ceiling as she tried to get behind the mage without getting in Grandel's way.

Mara ended up near two more skeletons and held her hands out, thumbs touching. A murmured spell later, a sheet of blue flames incinerated the skeletons in a much smaller version of her earlier attack.

Alara stepped into the room and to the right of the door, her bow out and an arrow nocked. Alara used the barbed war arrows of the wild tribes from her homeland and an instant after she stopped, she fired one at the rogue that had swung at Dralia. The arrow buried itself in his thigh and he went down as his leg crumpled under the flesh ripping wound.

Rowan stepped to the left of the door and looked around. There was a ghoul lurching toward Grandel in an attempt to protect its master and he brought his weapon down on its head. When twenty pounds of large well cured oak club meet the bones of a skull, there is only one result and this was no different. The ghoul crumpled to the ground, its head now located somewhere south of its shoulders.

Darry listened to the sounds of battle inside the room, stealing a quick look inside when he could, but mostly watching behind them as he stood just outside the door. This was the hardest part of escorting the academy trainees around, letting them do their own fighting, even if it meant they got hurt. He looked inside in time to see Shadow reappear behind the mage. Grandel saw her and altered his swing, to cut at the mage diagonally, shearing the mage from left shoulder to his right hip. At the same time, Shadow was sticking her short sword into the mage's neck on the right side, slicing easily through the arteries and nearly through his neck.

Either blow would have been fatal, but in combination, the necromancer was in the afterlife before he could do anything else.

Nightsinger stopped singing the bardic tune. "Dralia, Miranda, go get the townspeople. Unthev, Grandel, guard the vampire door. Mara, Alara, Rowan, check the other rooms for any more undead or human servants."

"Wildchild, watch over Shadow. Shadow, check the room and the mage."

The group went off on their tasks, and Darry looked in the room. Shadow was searching the room carefully, both in her trap searching and her looting. Grandel and Unthev were standing in front of the barred and locked door that should lead to the vampire's lair.

He looked at Nightsinger. "Why did you send Miranda after the people? Mara would scare them less."

Nightsinger was humming a tune as she checked Grandel's burns from the lightning bolt. She finished that and Grandel sighed. "Thank you, Nightsinger. That burn was right under the armour and it was beginning to chafe."

Nightsinger began helping Shadow search the room as she answered Darry. "She might frighten them at first, but she's also our only cleric and the best healer we have." She smiled at a thought. "Besides, no one not completely evil can talk to her for two minutes and be scared of her, unless he's attacked her."

Dralia and Miranda game back in then, guiding some townspeople. "Don't worry about their looks, little one. Pelor knows their hearts, and they are good people. No one still in here will hurt you." Miranda was carrying a small girl, about eight. The girl had her arms around Miranda's neck.

Besides the girl, six more people came out of the prison. Dralia was helping another one, a young woman of about twenty years. She had a would in her leg.

Nightsinger looked at Dralia. Dralia read the look. "Miranda spent all her healing for the day. They were in bad shape. Do you want us to use a potion?"

Nightsinger hesitated, looking at the wound. It was deep and starting to turn red around the edges. "Do it. Get her ready to go."

Nightsinger looked over her people as she thought. "Dralia, take charge of Mara and Rowan. I want you and Darry to escort them back to town and stay there."

Dralia frowned and Nightsinger saw it. "I know you would rather stay and fight vampires, but if something goes bad on us, the town will need your special gifts to defend it tonight. If the bloodsuckers get away, you're the only one that can find them before they strike."

She hesitated, studying the door. "In fact, take Grandel and leave Mara behind. We don't know how big the room behind that door is, or if Grandel will fit."

Dralia sighed. "As you wish, but if you get killed without us here, I'm going to bury you in a bright frilly pink dress, like that girl in Lowtown was wearing."

Nightsinger looked ill. "That's just wrong." She smiled at Dralia. "But the warning is heard."

Shadow came over to Nightsinger. "I've piled everything worth taking over there for the mages to examine, except the money. We'll do pretty good on this stuff and I thought the money might could go to helping the townspeople. Dralia could see to it."

Nightsinger looked around. "Anyone disagree?" The group was silent. The amount of gold here was nothing, really, and with the Academy providing everything they needed while they were there, they didn't need a lot of gold. "Dralia, take the money and give to the ones that need it."

Dralia nodded, accepting the pouch of coins from Shadow. "I will do my best." The four that had been detailed to escort the townspeople back to town started off, headed back up the tunnel. The little girl let go of Miranda's hand. "You'll come see us later, won't you?"

Miranda smiled at her. "I will, and if your momma says that it's OK with her, I'll take you for a flight."

The girl smiled and hugged Miranda before running up to take Dralia's hand and babble happily about the 'nice angel'. Miranda turned to find Nightsinger smiling. "Not a word from you." Miranda said, blushing.

Nightsinger's smile became a grin. "I didn't say a word."

Darry had hung back. "I don't like leaving you like this."

Nightsinger sighed. "I didn't think you would, but if this goes bad, Dralia will need the help you can give her in town tonight. After the fight we'll give them, and the loss of their meals, the vampires will be looking for the nearest meal and that's the town. Without the rest of us, Dralia will need good help, and you're the most experienced of all of us."

Darry nodded slowly, understanding the logic but not liking it. "Good hunting, Nightsinger. I hope I have a boring night."

He went after the group walking down the hallway. Nightsinger looked at her people. Mara, physically weaker than everyone except Shadow, but with an inner core of anger that made her a bad enemy.

Shadow, who's luck had held so far, and who's quick reactions had saved half the party at one time or another.

Unthev, the one member of the party that Nightsinger didn't really understand, due in large part to her inability to understand Psionics. She could see magic, with the right spell, but that mind power thing he did was beyond her capabilities. He'd proven himself a staunch ally though, and Nightsinger was happy to have him.

Wildchild, nine feet of muscle and claw, but who's mental acuity dwarfed his physical skills.

Alara, innocent beauty and a connection to nature from her Fey ancestors that no one else could match.

Miranda. Nightsinger could not always believe that she was any kind of demon or devil, given her devotion to Pelor and her cheerful nature, until someone offended her. Then she turned into a force of pure destruction.

"Are you done thinking, O fearless leader?" Unthev was smiling under his mask.

Nightsinger brought her mind back to the here and now. "No, but I have the beginnings of a plan. Shadow, check the door and unlock it. Right now, I'm assuming that we're going to find four coffins in there. If so, we'll take them one at a time. If we find something else when we open the door, we'll make a new plan."

They gathered near the door that led to the vampire's daytime hiding place and watched as Shadow tried to unlock the door. She failed the first time and swore. "This is an impressive lock." She pulled a different set of picks from her tool kit.

It took her four attempts, but Shadow's efforts were finally rewarded with a click.

As the opened, Shadow was thrown off her feet as the door burst open. Two huge barbaric figure jumped out of the room and attacked. One of them was holding a huge double bladed axe and he swung it at Wildchild. Wildchild almost ducked but the axe caught him a glancing blow on the head and laid him out bleeding and still.

The other one was swinging a large two handed sword at Unthev as he rushed out of the room but his swing was disrupted as he tripped over Shadow, booting her hard in the ribs and sending her sliding across the floor. He staggered but kept from falling.

Nightsinger had been a bit further away and she reacted, drawing her bastard sword and swinging at the leg of the axe wielder. She cut him and blood spurted but he didn't even slow down as everyone erupted into action.

Miranda reached for her maces. Miranda was the only person in the group that dual wielded weapons, using a heavy mace in her left hand and a lighter one in the right hand. She pulled her wings back and struck at the sword wielder. Her first swing hit him in the arm, leaving a mark, but her second swing glanced off of the furs on his shoulders.

Alara stepped back, her bow coming up and she hesitated, holding her shot until Mara moved out of the way. She fired, sinking an arrow deep in the axe user's chest. He staggered, reaching up and grabbing the shaft of the arrow and ripping it out of his chest.

From her place across the room Shadow winced as the barbed head tore out of his chest bringing a spray of blood and flesh with it. "That's gotta hurt," she muttered. The axeman stared at the arrow for a second and toppled over. "Yep, that hurt." She stood up and disappeared, even as she drew her magic dagger.

Mara put her hand up and unleashed a blast of coloured lights in the swordsman's face. He blinked and staggered, swinging wildly at nothing. The blade missed Wildchild by an inch as he stood up, still groggy from the blow to the head.

Wildchild shook his head and turned to see the barbarian about to cut Alara in half. With no time to cast another spell, he did the only thing he could. He reached out and stabbed his claws into the man's back, ripping through skin and muscle with ease. One hand was tearing the muscles in the man's shoulder and the other hand was lower, using the barbarian's spine as a handle. Wildchild flexed harder and strained. The man left the floor, dropping his sword as pain overrode the berserk rage he was under. Wildchild lifted him, and swung him into the wall, battering the man, breaking his face and skull in several places.

Wildchild slammed him into the wall twice more and dropped the body. He sighed. 'I hate having to get physical."

Nightsinger looked at him briefly before turning her attention back to the open door. "Worry about it later. We've got a job to do."

Shadow appeared, fluttering to the floor. "I've got to use a potion," she said, hold her side. "I think that big oaf broke a rib or two."

Miranda was there in an instant. "Let me see." She touched Shadow's side and watched her as she winced. "Hold still, I don't want to hurt you." She reached into her pouch and took out a bandage. She wrapped Shadow's ribs tightly and gave her a potion. "Here."

A few minutes later, she rejoined Nightsinger. "She's got a couple of broken ribs and I've wrapped them. I gave her a potion but she should stay out of this fight if she can."

Nightsinger nodded. "Alara, you and I have point on this one. Shadow, you and Wildchild have the rear. Unthev, you're behind me. Miranda, watch Alara. Mara, you hang back with Wildchild." She grinned briefly. "Try to keep him from getting too physical."

Mara looked at Wildchild. He stood nine foot tall and was broad through the shoulders, weighing close to three hundred pounds. Mara was just over five feet high and barely broke a hundred pounds. "What am I supposed to do? Bite his ankles?"

Nightsinger led the way into the room behind the door. The room was about twelve feet high and forty feet long. It was wider than it was long, nearly sixty feet. The room had two piles of furs and a single coffin. Nightsinger stepped up close to the coffin and Unthev pulled a stake, stepping up next to her.

Nightsinger grabbed the lid, checking that Unthev was ready. He nodded and she heaved the lid back. Unthev raised the stake and stopped. "It's empty."

Nightsinger frowned. "Where are the vampires?"

Alara was looking at the ceiling. "Give me a minute." She stepped over to the side of the room and made a strangely high pitched sound. A few seconds after she started, a bat flew down from the ceiling. Alara fed it something from her pouch and stroked it for a minute. After a couple more tidbits and some more sounds, Alara let the bat go and looked at the others.

"The vampires don't sleep here. They come in and let the barbarians lock the door. After that, they turn into mist and go out the same crack he uses to go hunting. He says there's another cave system that was safe for small creatures, until the vampires came."

Nightsinger swore. "It's nearly three. We're not going to find their hideout tonight."

Miranda frowned. "They're going to be looking for a meal. They'll come here first and when the barbarians aren't in here, they'll know something is wrong."

Nightsinger started toward the door. "We've got to get to that town before they do."

The group started toward the door. Dralia and the others were going to be expecting their friends or battered vampires, not undamaged bloodsuckers that knew there were adventurers in the area.

They had to get to town and warn the people.

_**OoOoOoO The Author, Here and Now, 24MAR08. OoOoOoO**_

_AN: Yes, I have a computer again, Yes, I am working on the next chapter of this, but I owe a lot of people that are waiting for SoG, BoB, MM&WS and PoE. We will see if they make it to town and what happens next in the next chapter._

_Those of you that play D&D can find most of the half-breeds in this story in the D20 book "Bastards and Bloodlines", along with the rules for mixing the various races._

_The Adventurer's Academy is a creation of Alex, who created it to be able to help beginning players out. A player that has gone through the Academy can get a bit of GM help when they run into problems. "You had a class about this (Monster, situation, Country, Race, ETC) Fill in the blank." Experienced players don't normally need it, but for newbies in their first few games, it's a good way to help them out without showing too much favouritism._

_If you'd like to know how to build an Academy of your own, drop me an email or PM and I'll send you the stats for ours._

_Raven_


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